New campus makes the grade in Vacaville

New campus makes the grade in Vacaville
East Bay Business Times - by David Goll
Friday, April 11, 2008

Solano Community College should have a new, $18.7 million Vacaville campus open in time for the start of the 2009-2010 academic year.

Construction on the first phase of a 25-year plan to build a permanent satellite campus on 63 acres along North Village Parkway is scheduled to start in June if college district trustees approve a construction bid at their May 7 meeting, according to Frank Kitchen, director of facilities for the Fairfield-based college district. It will consist of a two-story, 40,000-square-foot building that will be able to accommodate 6,000 students.

The site is located across North Village Parkway from the existing Solano Community College campus, located in leased space, that opened in October 1996. Facilities operated by Kaiser Permanente of Oakland and Genentech Inc. of South San Francisco are nearby.

Kitchen said the new Vacaville structure should be ready two years after the district debuted another new satellite campus in Vallejo. That two-story, 39,468-square-foot, $22.3 million building opened in September 2007.

The Vallejo campus has proved such a draw that the district must add additional parking to accommodate a larger-than-expected number of students, Kitchen said. Previously, college classes were offered in the basement of Vallejo City Hall, Kitchen said.

The new campuses, along with a number of new and remodeled buildings on the 192-acre main college campus in Fairfield, were made possible by the passage of the $125 million Measure G bond measure by Solano County voters in 2006.

Kitchen said both campuses were designed by KMD Architects of San Francisco. A "bid walk" at the Vacaville site attracted more than 30 contractors, he added.

"They're not cookie cutter, but there are enough similarities between the two of them to make it easier to plan for how we will use the buildings," Kitchen said.

He said the Vacaville building will consist of 15 classrooms, a lecture hall, a recreational area and a general-purpose room. At present, the college offers transfer-level, lower-division courses in computer science, fire science and criminal justice, among other programs.

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