WILLMAR -- The leftover buildings from a 1950s Air Force radar base simply can't meet the demands of providing a 21st century technical education, Ridgewater College officials said Thursday.
Members of the Minnesota Senate Capital Investment Committee toured some older parts of the college's Willmar campus Thursday evening.
The college is asking legislators to include $3.5 million for Ridgewater's Willmar campus in the bonding bill they will take up in the 2008 Legislative Session. The college would request an addition $14.5 million to finish the project in 2010.
In all, the college plans to tear down about 33,500 square feet of buildings that date back to the 1950s, when the campus was an Air Force base. It became a college in the early 1960s. The project would include remodeling another 77,100 square feet and building 18,100 square feet of new space. It would benefit a dozen technical programs, including the agriculture, continuing education, carpentry, electronics and electrician.
Gary Myhre, director of facilities, led a brief tour of the western end of the campus to point out some of the changes planned.
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Some buildings to be removed include the Continuing and Customized Education building and the old Air Force gymnasium and theater, which now house the cosmetology and massage therapy programs. Another is the old machine shop/garage which was remodeled for the electrician program.
Part of the remodeling project would develop space for the electrician program next to the carpentry program, so they can work together, Myhre said. They are now in different parts of the campus.
In addition to the concern about developing appropriate instructional space, the project will help beautify the appearance of the campus's entrance.
The campus used to be two separate schools, a community college and a technical college. It has been one school since the 1990s, but it still has some duplicated space, including two administration buildings next to each other.
Removing the old buildings on the west end will "clean this whole area up, make some nice green space and just kind of beautify the front of our campus a little more," Myhre said.
The current Student Service building would get a new, two-story entrance and become the formal entrance for the college, he said.
Committee Chairman Sen. Keith Langseth, DFL-Glyndon, said the Ridgewater request would be part of about $4 billion in requests the committee will receive by the time the Legislature convenes in February. The final bonding bill will probably be about $1 billion.
"Higher ed is owned by the state, and run by the state, and it's a significant investment by the state," Langseth said. "Certainly we're going to fund a lot more than one-fourth of higher ed."
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Still, he said, he couldn't predict what might or might not be funded in the final version of the bill next spring. The committee had seen many worthy projects this week during a four-day tour around the state, he said.
After the tour, college president Douglas Allen said he admired the "entrepreneurial spirit" of the college staff, which has made things work in the old Air Force facilities for a long time.
But it's important for the college's technical programs that their space be updated, he added.
