SPSCC’s Lacey campus ready to open

With all the furniture in place, office supplies unpacked and landscaping touched up, South Puget Sound Community College’s new Lacey campus officially opens Monday.

“It’s beautiful,” SPSCC customer service specialist Aiesa Johnston said as she organized items in her workspace. “I like how big it is, and we have so many more computer labs.”

SPSCC leased space in a shopping center in the Hawks Prairie area of Lacey for nearly 20 years.

“Now we finally have that permanent home,” said Aaron Managhan, a communications consultant for the Olympia-based college. “We’re really excited to have a space to call our own.”

SPSCC sophomore Sarah Hussain said she’s excited to see the new campus, at 4220 Sixth Ave. SE.

“It’s a cool new building,” said Hussain, 20, of Lacey. “It’s a new space, a new environment.”

She said one of the biggest perks of the new campus is that it’s within walking distance to everything college students need, including the Lacey Timberland Library and a variety of restaurants and other retailers.

“It’s very handy,” Hussain said. “There are good places to go study. There are a lot of coffee shops around the area.”

The new campus offers:

▪ A state-of-the-art testing center.

▪ A digital area, where students can plug in and charge their devices, or use one of the college’s computer terminals to access their accounts.

▪ Three event rooms. Each room can seat as many as 100 people, and can be used for conferences, training events and banquets.

“For the most part, they are going to be available for daytime and weekend rental,” said Kelly Green, director of public relations and events for the college.

▪ Environmentally friendly features such as automatic lighting and low-flow toilets. The building wasn’t eligible for any specific environmental certification programs, such as LEED, because of water pressure issues, Green said, but it was remodeled with many of those standards in mind.

▪ Staff offices and classrooms with new furnishings and technology.

▪ Six conference rooms, which can be used by students, staff or groups that want to rent space for meetings or training events.

The Hawks Prairie campus offered a mix of personal-enrichment classes, and was SPSCC’s hub for business and professional training courses.

“We definitely enjoyed the time we had at Hawks,” Managhan said. “The community embraced us.”

The college will continue to offer its corporate and community education programs at the new campus. But it also plans to expand some of its offerings, particularly its for-credit classes for students who are seeking a two-year Associate of Arts degree.

In the past, Hawks Prairie students pursuing an AA degree had to take many of their classes at the Olympia campus, Managhan said.

“It was extremely limited at Hawks,” he said.

Now, students can take most, if not all, of their courses at Lacey, if they want, Managhan said.

The Lacey campus is across from the Intercity Transit station, in a complex formerly known as Rowe Six. In 2012, the college paid about $4 million for the property, which included five buildings totaling more than 100,000 square feet.

For now, the college plans to use just two of the buildings on the campus, Green said.

The main building, which is 52,000 square feet, and will serve as a “one-stop shop” and offer everything from registration and advising to classes and testing, she said. It cost about $12 million to remodel the building, and the contractor was Korsmo Construction, Green said.

A smaller building on the campus houses the college’s Advanced Manufacturing Program, but it wasn’t heavily remodeled.

The main building also will house the Thurston County Economic Development Council. The hope is that the two parties will be able to work more closely together in supporting local businesses, start-ups and entrepreneurs, Green said.

“We feel like there’s just so much synergy between us and the EDC,” she said. “We’re thrilled about it.”

SPSCC at Hawks Prairie served about 8,000 students per year in noncredit programs, and about 1,500 in its for-credit classes, Noel Rubadue, dean for Corporate and Continuing Education, said last spring. An additional 1,600 students used the center’s professional testing services, she said.

The new campus will allow that population to grow by about 7 percent, Green said.

Officials expect some of that increase to be generated by the Running Start program, which allows high schoolers to take community college courses for credit and finish a two-year college degree. The location of the Lacey campus will likely draw more students from North Thurston Public Schools’ high schools, Green said.

College officials also predict an influx of new students from Yelm and other areas of the county because the Lacey campus is across the street from a transit center, she added.

In 2005, the college paid $6.2 million for a 54.5-acre site at 3210 Marvin Road NE for a new campus. But then the economy crashed, and college officials decided not to develop the site.

The Marvin Road property is on the market, and there has been some interest in it, Green said.

This story was originally published September 12, 2015 at 10:00 AM with the headline "SPSCC’s Lacey campus ready to open."