Sowing Seeds of Support

In the near future, Pierce College could encompass an agricultural research center, a senior citizens community and a university football stadium while retaining its regular programs under proposals being unveiled by school administrators.

President Darroch “Rocky” Young has spent the past week previewing to community groups a proposed master plan for a more compact, high-tech campus.

With 425 acres, including 250 acres of the West Valley’s last undeveloped land as its palette, the school’s administration refined the picture of its dream campus to one that joins with corporations and other schools for leading-edge research but remains true to Pierce’s agricultural roots.

The proposition is ambitious. If the board approves every aspect, it would put to use nearly every square foot of the half of the campus that has remained pristine since it opened in 1933. Wireless computer networks between each building would bypass a decade of technology that campuses nationwide have paid millions to install. Two dorm buildings--one for “college age” students and one for senior citizens enrolled in classes--also would be built.

Two generations of students living on the campus would be a new notion for a community college, Young said.

“I do want us to be seen as exemplary, as visionary, on the cutting edge,” Young said. “As a result, we’re going to be a magnet to students.”

The master plan includes:

* A refurbished stadium where Cal State Northridge’s football team would play for three years.

* An expansion of the school’s teaching farm.

* Dorm rooms for younger students.

* Science labs where students would work side-by-side with private research company scientists.

* A “pizza-shaped” garden that takes young children through the food process, from seedling to the table.

* An upgraded equestrian center open to students and the public.

* A veterinary teaching hospital.

* Cosmetic improvements to existing one-story buildings to make the entire campus resemble a Spanish mission.

Sketches of the plan will be available during an open house from 5 to 9 p.m. Thursday in the Campus Center, and the final document will be submitted in December to the Los Angeles Community College Board of Trustees. The entire project would be completed in six to 10 years, Young said.

The new campus vision is gaining the community support that eluded an earlier golf course proposal. A Woodland Hills and West Hills neighborhood advisory panel to City Councilwoman Laura Chick last week gave high marks to three variations of the plan, all of which dedicate about the same amount of space for farming as the current layout.

“Let’s face it, we’re in Southern California,” panel member Richard Tasoff said. “There is no agriculture here anymore. Well, there is some, but it’s tucked away. I like the way that, instead of having to drive to the city, [Pierce is] adding services to the Valley.”

The undeveloped portion of Pierce is valued at more than $500 million, college spokesman Mike Cornner said. Trustees have struggled with what to do with it, most recently in 1998 when the school was operating in the red. At the time, former President E. Bing Inocencio proposed leasing the farmland for a golf course. It could have brought revenue to Pierce, but the proposal was so heartily opposed by the Woodland Hills community that the deal was scrapped.

“People think of this as the farm, a place they go to take a walk or go jogging,” Cornner said. “I understand the emotional connection to the place, but we are a high-end institution of learning. Agriculture is going to be a part of our plan, but we’ve got to make better use of our land.”

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Withered grapevines and fruit trees almost undistinguishable from the underbrush twist up from the brown fields on the west side of campus. Goats graze in a pen near the football stadium, and sheep huddle in the shade of a pen beyond an abandoned swine barn.

The hill-and-field horizon is broken by high rises in the Warner Center skyline.

“This is not a farm,” said Cornner, who grew up around farms in Coffeyville, Kan. “This reeks of a lack of money. This, in the Century City of the Valley.”

That’s where the partnerships with the private firms come in, Young said.

“Each of the partners has to fit within the academic mission of the college,” Young said. “We have a pretty clear sense that all these [plans] are viable, but we have not lined up any partners yet.”

No price tag has been figured for the development, but Young said a proposed bond issue anticipated for the election next spring would pay for core academic buildings, such as a new science center. Business partners would pay for the construction of the senior apartments and the biotech labs, he said.

Pierce would get buildings and commitments to use students as interns. The firms would get an academic environment and cheap labor next to the highly commercial Warner Center.

For the master plan to be realized, Young must solidify support among his own trustees, private partners must commit funds and a bond proposal must pass. Heading off opposition would make all that easier, he said.

Young said he hopes adding more stakeholders will broaden the support base. In the future, Pierce could host kindergarten kids in the pizza garden, high school students at the equestrian center and their grandparents in a world religions class.

“We have an educational responsibility to our entire service area,” Young said. In addition to the academic partners, CSUN is in it for the football stadium, Las Virgenes Water District wants to test recycled materials in the new lab, and the city’s Public Works Department wants to grind wood waste on a corner of the property, Young said.

All the plans are subject to change before the December trustees meeting, he noted.