Gavilan College trustees discussed education center sites for San Benito County but took no action, as the item was slated for just discussion at the March 8 board meeting.
The topic of a possible partnership with the City of Hollister to run a temporary educational center at the city’s Leatherback property, with plans to build a permanent campus at the Fairview Corners site off Airline Highway once enrollment meets a certain threshold, surfaced during a facilities development and utilization committee meeting in mid-February.
“We have a political nightmare going on in San Benito County because of the reality now that nothing has happened except acquiring the property over there,” Trustee Kent Child, who represents Hollister, told the board last week, according to a recording of the meeting provided by Jan Bernstein-Chargin, the district’s director of public information. Child added there is a very small, but vocal percentage of residents in San Benito County—and particularly Hollister—who are adamant that the college should not be built on the 80-acre Fairview Corners site the district purchased across from Ridgemark Golf & Country Club.
“They consider it an insult to their view of the world that we would consider doing it out in the boonies. Now, what are the boonies? That’s a relative and subjective term,” Child said. “They also feel it’s a huge affront to significant percentage of our students to even consider putting a campus on what is a geographically beautiful spot. You couldn’t find a better location for a college campus than the property we bought, from an aesthetic standpoint, from an environmental standpoint. But it’s right across from a gated community and golf course. And that is really an interesting sociological, political nightmare that we have to deal with. And I don’t know how to do it.”
Student Trustee Adrian Lopez, told the board he lives in Hollister and commutes to the community college’s main Gilroy campus four times a week.
“The few students I talked to, they just want a home,” he said.
