The Gavilan Joint Community College District Board of Trustees
voted unanimously last week to purchase an 85-acre plot of land off
San Felipe Road for a satellite campus
– the first step of what college officials anticipate will be
the long road to bringing higher education to San Benito
County.
Hollister – The Gavilan Joint Community College District Board of Trustees voted unanimously last week to purchase an 85-acre plot of land off San Felipe Road for a satellite campus – the first step of what college officials anticipate will be the long road to bringing higher education to San Benito County.
“We finally have some closure on the first part of this process,” said board member Kent Child, a Hollister resident. “Now we have to go into wrapping up the actual real estate transaction.”
The land in question is part of the Rancho Bolsa De San Felipe property near the Hollister Airport, chosen for its accessibility and suitability for easy development, as well as price. According to the sale agreement, the District will pay $50,000 per acre, on top of an initial $50,000 deposit – a little more than $4 million all told, after escrow fees and other applicable expenses. Measure E, the 2004 bond measure that funded the purchase, allotted $12.7 million for a Hollister site, leaving $8.7 million for the District to use toward developing and building on the land.
While the Board has approved the purchase as of last Tuesday, the deal is far from final. The District is entering a 150-day “feasibility period,” which allows both the District and representatives from the state to determine exactly how viable the site is for a new campus. The process includes an environmental impact study, real estate appraisal and a determination of how likely the land is to sustain serious damage in the event of an earthquake, as well as figuring out how a new campus will impact the airport’s operation. While the board is confident that the state will approve the acquisition, there is always the chance that something will go awry.
“Hopefully nothing major will turn up,” Child said. “If it does, we’re back to square one.”
If all goes according to plan, the college hopes to begin designing plans and seeking out additional funding from the state for the project. Using the money leftover from the $12.7 million Measure E earmark, the college plans to have an initial classroom structure, similar to the classrooms currently located at the Briggs Building, available to the public within three to five years.
“It’s a matter of getting in line with our hands out, just like all the other community colleges in the state, to see what we can get in the way of funding,” Child said. “But there isn’t a lot of land acquisition happening these days, so maybe the process won’t be as long as it has been in past years.”
Despite the site’s proximity to the Hollister Airport, airport manager Bill Gere did not anticipate the new campus posing a problem.
“It seems far enough away that it won’t be a big hindrance as far as airport operation goes,” he said. “But the land use plan does need to be reviewed by the Airport Land Use Commission… We should start building tomorrow, in my personal view.”
The board also voted to purchase land in Coyote Valley for a similar satellite campus enterprise. The college will receive 55 acres of land at $8 a square foot, for a total cost of approximately $18 million dollars.
Within 30 years, the District plans for both sites to be fully-functioning campuses, complete with athletic facilities, a library and a performing arts facility.
“This is really exciting,” said board President Tom Breen. “None of this will come to fruition until long after I’m buried, probably, but that’s OK. It’s something that needed to be done… It’s wonderful to be a part of something like this in its early development.”
