CC breaks ground on $4 million project in Pampa

Clarendon College officials broke ground last Thursday on a $4 million project to construct two workforce education buildings at its Pampa Center.

The facilities to be located southwest of the M.K. Brown Academic Center on CC’s 55-acre Kentucky Street campus will house the college’s wind energy, welding, nursing, nail technician, heating and air-conditioning, cosmetology, and EMT classes in Gray County.

The two buildings will total approximately 23,000 square feet, but CC President Bill Auvenshine says the college plans to outgrow these facilities very soon.

“We’re on a ‘build as you grow’ plan,” Auvenshine said. “We believe we will very soon outgrow these facilities and will have to build a single, larger building to house our vocational programs.”

As growth comes the buildings now under construction will be converted to academic classrooms.
The current project is phase one in a three-phase plan that will include the larger vocational building Auvenshine mentioned in addition to a library, a student center, dorms, and a cafeteria.

Auvenshine said one of the buildings now under construction will include limited space for library resources and a small student center area.

The project is expected to take 18 months and should be ready for the spring 2011 semester.

Bonds for the $4 million project will be paid for with funds from a five-cent maintenance in Gray County.

Auvenshine said that the bonds will be paid for in 15 years and that CC can only go further with its plans in Pampa if funds are donated to the college.

“I think there will be donated money come in from Gray County,” the president said. “Someday there will be a big beautiful campus in Pampa, but it will take several years. It probably won’t be in my lifetime.”

Auvenshine said growth on the home campus in Clarendon is dependent on the college building new dorms; but unless a benefactor donates money for that, the college cannot look at doing that until after 2015 when the revenue bonds for Regents Hall are paid off.

“We could add another 100 students to the Clarendon campus easily if we had the dorm space,” he said.
In other college business, the Board of Regents met immediately after the groundbreaking for its regular meetings. Among the agenda items considered, Regents approved purchasing new ITV equipment from Comdata Solutions of Amarillo with a bid of $86,570.40.