New building added to Foothill's Measure C project list

Courtesy of FHDA The Foothill-De Anza Community College District plans to consolidate administrative staff in a single building.

Regular visitors to the Foothill College campus over the past few years are familiar with dust, work crews and sidewalk detours, a bustling construction boom due in large part to Measure C a $491 million bond local voters passed in 2006 to fund construction, equipment and technology in the Foothill-De Anza Community College District.

In addition to the new Physical Sciences & Engineering Center, improvements have included classroom modernization, photovoltaic system installation and circulation upgrades across the campus. One additional building, a 24,000-square-foot administrative office near parking Lot 7, is scheduled to break ground in December 2015.

The original Measure C project list included a remodel of the aging District Office Building. Upon evaluating the plan at a meeting last year, senior officials determined that it would be more cost-effective and sustainable to locate all district staff in a new building. Human resources, business services, purchasing and district foundation staff are currently dispersed in modular buildings and other locations across campus.

The high cost of fixing structural and mechanical issues in the existing District Office Building also made starting fresh a prudent option. Measure C proposed a new data center for Education Technology Services staff, but diminishing data storage needs since 2006 made moving the current ETS staff to the District Office Building a more sensible plan.

We determined that we no longer needed to build a new data center. The old District Office Building was the right size for ETS staff, said Kevin McElroy, vice chancellor of business services for the Foothill-De Anza Community College District. What weve ultimately done is flip-flopped the two projects.

McElroy noted that the new space would accommodate district and foundation needs better than the old office building and would provide a boardroom that is more accessible to the public.

According to McElroy, the district examined more than six locations on the Foothill campus before settling on Lot 7 for the new administrative building. Unlike other campus sites, the location requires limited grading, electrical and plumbing work, and is close to campus access points along Moody Road.

The Foothill-De Anza Community College District Board of Trustees authorized district staff to conduct a preliminary study in April and amended the bond project list in May. At a study session Aug. 25, the board received a series of program diagrams, building plans and conceptual renderings.

We wanted to make sure they were comfortable with our design direction, McElroy said.

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New building added to Foothill's Measure C project list