A few years from now, Allan Hancock College students will be able to pursue an arts education without having to take a class here, rushing to the opposite side of campus for another class there, and then jumping in a car and driving across Stowell for yet another. Like a sculptor with clay on a potter’s wheel, the college will massage those classes together into a smooth new fine arts building—minus all the spinning and subsequent kiln firing.
On March 24, the college’s board voted to approve full funding for the capital construction of a fine arts building, which will be fully funded with Measure I bond money.
The building will be located behind building K on the Santa Maria campus. The roughly 65,000-square-foot facility will house fine arts, performing arts, music, instructional media, ceramics, photography, and dance. Currently, these classes are spread all over campus.
The new complex will also allow the college to remodel buildings E and F to house PCPA operations, which are currently run out of the CBC building on Stowell. Moving PCPA onto campus would allow the college to terminate that lease, creating a savings of about $300,000 a year, said Felix Hernandez, vice president of facilities and operations.
“I’d say that’s pretty significant,” Hernandez said. “I’d be jumping up and down at that savings.”
Arriving at this place hasn’t been easy in this economic climate. Measure I is a $180 million general facilities bond Northern Santa Barbara County residents approved on June 6, 2006. The funding is set for modernizing the school’s technology, upgrading the facility, and building new teaching and learning spaces.
The fine arts project has been in line for funding for years and was next in the order of priority, but securing funding for it didn’t come without some raised eyebrows. Hernandez explained that the project was to be partially funded with Measure I money, with the state funding the rest. When the state hit hard economic times, the college went back to the board, and they decided to fully fund the project with Measure I money.
The board’s decision is significant because in March 2008 the intent was to approve $28 million of bond funds, anticipating a match from the state through a statewide construction bond.
“At the time, the district anticipated receiving $19.5 million in state funding for the project because we were at the top of the list to receive capital construction dollars had the bond passed. But instead, the bond was not even placed on the November 2008 ballot, and therefore no funding was made available,” said Rebecca Alarcio, director of the college’s public affairs and publications.
She said the next possibility for statewide funding wouldn’t be until 2010, at which time the college wouldn’t have priority for funding, as every college would have to basically start over again in the prioritization channel.
To get the project done, the board voted to increase the allocation for the fine arts project by $10,450,802 for a total project cost of $40,874,920—and a lot of happy students and faculty.
The project will also touch the industrial technology department. The fine arts endeavor will free up a building to be remodeled for IT—and that project took some maneuvering to get funded. Since the board was fully funding the fine arts project, there weren’t going be any funds for IT.
Hernandez said the board asked for a strategy, which turned out to be shifting some money from scheduled maintenance dollars to help fund an IT project. As funding becomes available, the college will continue scheduled maintenance projects.
Hernandez said the project will take about five years, so he estimates the fine arts facililty will be completed in 2014 or 2015.
Arts Editor Shelly Cone likes creating savings. Contact her at scone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Apr 9-16, 2009.