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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883
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Community college breaks ground today

By Shawn Vestal shawnv@spokesman.com(509) 459-5431

Spokane Falls Community College will break ground today on its first new campus building in more than a decade.

It’s part of more than $150 million in construction projects planned over the next several years in the Community Colleges of Spokane system.

Officials will break ground today on a Business and Social Sciences Building that’s slated to be finished by late 2008. The new building will replace three existing ones, expand the overall space available and update the technological features in classrooms. It will also meet “green” building standards for using lots of natural light and recycled materials and for being energy efficient.

“We’re really replacing three old, mid-‘60s vintage buildings,” said Scott Morgan, chief operations officer for the CCS system.

The $21.6 million building will cover 67,700 square feet, almost double the total space of the buildings it will replace. Once it’s completed, three buildings will come down – Social Science North, Social Science South (buildings 3 and 14) and Business (building 4).

Morgan said the last new building on the SFCC campus was the technical arts building, constructed in 1994.

It’s just one of several construction projects, worth nearly $150 million, in the pipeline in the CCS system – though much of that planned work still requires state approval and funding.

A new science building on the Spokane Community College campus, begun in 2004, is slated to open this fall. The 65,288-square-foot building features 14 science and math classrooms with room for 580 students; 13 labs equipped for 340 students; and 38 offices for about 54 instructors and staff members.

There are also several pending construction projects that have already received some state funding. SFCC plans to build a new classroom building and early learning center starting in 2010 or 2011. The projects are estimated to cost $21.9 million.

Around the same time frame, officials hope to start work on a $32.9 million technical education building at SCC and $29.8 million science building at SFCC.