Mission College Has a New but Already Cramped Campus : Education: Officials give tours of Sylmar community college. But administrators warn that its completion depends on a $20-million ballot measure.

Sixteen years after it was established, Mission College unveiled its nearly completed campus Tuesday, but administrators warned that the Sylmar site falls short of the school’s needs and urged voters to approve an April bond measure.

The college--which has held classes in rented storefronts, high schools and hospital auditoriums since it was founded in 1975--needs at least $30 million to build a library and other facilities at the new campus at Hubbard Street and Eldridge Avenue, administrators said.

School administrators are relying on passage of the bond measure, Proposition C, to provide at least $20 million. If two-thirds of the voters in the Los Angeles Community College District approve Proposition C on April 9, the district will receive $200 million to improve its nine campuses, including Mission College.

But if the measure does not pass, “we’re in dire straits,” Don Phelps, chancellor of the Los Angeles Community Colleges, said. He added that the district eventually might be forced to turn students away because the state lacks money to build facilities to serve them.

“This measure is our salvation,” he said.

David Mertes, chancellor of the California Community Colleges, confirmed that “there are just no state dollars” to complete Mission College if Proposition C fails.

Mertes and Phelps were among about 65 local and state educators who took a tour Tuesday of the campus, scheduled to open this fall. The college was able to buy the Sylmar site with about $22 million in state and local funds.

Work on three beige buildings with steep red-tile roofs just west of El Cariso Regional Park is nearing completion. The campus, which resembles a suburban shopping mall, will house classrooms, offices, a student center, bookstore and temporary library.

Administrators and professors, many of whom have waited years for the college to move into permanent quarters, seemed subdued Tuesday, their elation at the prospect of a new campus tempered by worries that the student population had already outgrown it.

The three buildings were planned to hold a projected student body of about 3,000, officials said, but enrollment has soared to 6,000.

“Everything is just too small--it was built for half the size,” said Anatol (Andy) Mazor, vice president of academic affairs.

Mazor said the school has hired a consultant to determine how to partition the faculty offices in the instructional and administrative building because there are far more professors than offices.

Jack Fujimoto, acting college president, said the school has 800 parking spaces and needs 400 more. He said he is negotiating with Los Angeles County to trade eight acres that the college owns--about a mile east of the campus--for county-owned land adjoining the campus that could be used for a parking lot.

Some programs, such as fine arts, will remain off-campus because there is not enough room in the new buildings, Fujimoto said.

Some visitors who toured the buildings did not allow the lack of space and funding problems to dampen their spirits. Jesus Bernal, 20, of Sylmar, one of six members of the student senate, said some classrooms are so crowded that students have to stand outside the open windows taking notes.

“Compared to what we have now, this is like a dream come true,” he said.