Final Push Being Made for Campus in Palmdale

Faced with projections of massive regional population growth, Antelope Valley College officials have spent 10 years crafting a complex deal to create a high-tech, 10,000-student satellite campus on a rocky lot on the city’s south side.

The final $40-million plan eased concerns of neighbors and satisfied the demands of developers seeking to put homes and a golf course on adjoining land, but gave state education officials a bad case of sticker shock. They rejected the plan in September.

So interim President Patricia Sandoval will lead a delegation to Sacramento today in a last-ditch effort to secure state funds to build the project. Without the money, she says, thousands of students will continue to shuttle among makeshift classrooms in storefronts and community centers for four more years, when the state next takes up funding for new campuses.

Fred Harris, vice chancellor of the state Post-Secondary Education Commission, said the proposal was by far the most expensive of hundreds of requests considered by the chancellor’s office. If approved, it would have consumed a quarter of the money set aside for new construction for all the state’s colleges.

“Sticker-price shock distinguished the Palmdale site from other requests,” Harris said.

Most other schools begin piecemeal, with a math class in an auditorium or an English class in a portable building, for example, Harris said. Antelope Valley College’s ambitious deal would have shattered the mold.

At a time when nearly all community colleges are scrounging for space, a less costly project is more likely to get funding, officials said.

“This shuts down the educational growth in this area,” Sandoval said. “In this end of L.A. County, we’re it. So I’m really going to be begging and asking if there is any funding they would consider for our area.”

Sandoval will ask the chancellor’s office to squeeze her project into the budget. The satellite campus would be 13 miles south of the main campus in Lancaster.

But there are still some unresolved problems to the three-way deal among the college, the city and landowners.

For one thing, the school must own the land or have an airtight commitment on it to convince the chancellor’s office that it deserves funding.

Landowners David P. Bushnell and Jack Schoellerman said they will not hand over the deed until the city approves an 847-home development next to the school. The city insists the school be built before the developers build any homes.

And each side says one of the others should spend the first $8 million to build a new road to the school, golf course and homes.

“It’s been very difficult, but we hope to resolve any remaining issues in the very near future,” Schoellerman said.

Palmdale City Manager Bob Toone said the landowners are needlessly delaying the land transfer to strengthen their negotiating position.

“They had their zoning approval a year ago,” Toone said. “They could have conveyed the land to the college any time since then.”

Toone and Schoellerman said they did not want their quarrels to jeopardize funding for the campus, which all sides agree is needed to meet the demands of a predicted population boom. Antelope Valley College estimates the area it serves will grow from 330,000 people to about 1 million in the next 20 years.

But the need does not match the cost, Harris said. With 10,000 students, Antelope Valley College uses only about 90% of its current capacity while other schools that were denied funding cram students into buildings filled well beyond their capacities, he said.

“We don’t want to have a build-it-and-they-will-come philosophy because of the scarcity of funds,” Harris said. “We don’t see the basis for [Antelope Valley College’s] projections.”

New community college building projects funded this year include a technology center at East Los Angeles College and a new campus in the San Joaquin Valley city of Madera. East Los Angeles College has 25,000 students crowded onto a campus that held 16,000 six years ago. Madera has held classes in loaned space for more than five years while awaiting funding, Harris said.

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Multiple developments proposed

Antelope Valley College wants to build a 10,000-student campus adjacent to a proposed development for 847 homes and a golf course in Palmdale. A look at the plan: