College Announces 5-Year Plan for Growth : Santa Clarita: College of the Canyons, the state’s fastest-growing community college, describes a $47-million building program.

College of the Canyons, the fastest-growing community college in the state, has announced a five-year, $47-million building program to renovate and expand its campus in Santa Clarita.

The ambitious expansion project includes classrooms, a computer center, fine arts building, performing arts theater, an administration building, a small gymnasium and other recreational facilities. The college also would remodel existing classrooms and laboratories.

Just how the two-year school will pay for the expansion, however, is still unknown, President Dianne G. Van Hook said Wednesday.

Although some of the projects are eligible for state funding, that money is not yet available. Hook said the money could become available if voters approve a bond measure and another measure on the June ballot that would ease limits on state spending.

College of the Canyons, like the Santa Clarita Valley it serves, experienced rapid growth during the 1980s. Enrollment grew by 2,410 students from 1982 to 1990. If the current rate of growth continues, college officials say, the campus will have 12,149 students by 1997.

The centerpiece of the expansion plan is a three-story, $6.6-million library to replace the 8,000-square-foot library now housed on the third floor of the instructional resource center. The current library, which serves 5,900 students, has room for only 50 seats at desks and study carrels.

“We’re cramped,” said librarian Dona Mitoma. “Fifty seats doesn’t go very far.”

The new library, to be built on what is now a grassy hillside opposite the old library, would have 28,000 square feet, enough room for 75,000 volumes, said Jan Keller, assistant dean of learning resources. The current library holds 40,000 volumes.

Keller said college officials hope to open the new library in the fall of 1994.

The college’s phenomenal growth in recent years has thrust it ahead of some colleges in the long line of those applying for state funds for construction on campuses, Hook said.

In 1988, the state Department of Finance estimated that College of Canyons would have 5,780 students in 1992, a figure the college surpassed this year. The finance department, prodded by college officials, has since updated its enrollment projections, which are used to gauge an institution’s financial needs.

As a result, Van Hook said, the new library will be eligible for funding in July, 1991. Under the old estimates, the project would not have become eligible until 1998, she said.