Construction Underway
Meanwhile, construction continues at LCC on a $120 million master facilities plan first unveiled in 2008. Funding for the master plan is unrelated to the $50 million operating budget but is a separate capital outlay account. The initial phase is the now-completed construction of the $14.7 million Lewis Energy Academic Center, named for the San Antonio businessman Rodney Lewis and located at the site of the former Killam dormitories. The three-story, 111,045-square-foot (10,316.4 m2) facility, which opened in January 2012, offers new classrooms, computer labs, and faculty offices. Groundbreaking for the academic building was held on September 15, 2010, in what President Maldonado referred to "the beginning of a journey."
On March 2, 2011, LCC launched construction on the $9.6 million Visual and Performing Arts Center located on the north end of the campus near Fort McIntosh Park. The 47,000-square-foot (4,400 m2) structure houses studios and lecture labs for ceramics, art metals, drawing, painting and digital art. A large rotunda is located at the front of the building. There are instructional rooms for the study of dance and percussion music. The arts center also opened in January 2012 at the same time as the Lewis Energy Academic Center.
The LCC renovation plan is divided into four phases, including $15,000 worth of work to the President's Home. The initial plan did not propose a new academic building because of the costs, but the LCC trustees decided to build a new permanent facility instead of less expensive but temporary piecemeal renovations. Maldonado said that the trustees "took a pre-calculated risk . . . and made a decision to move forward." Former trustees president Pete Saenz, a Laredo attorney, said at the groundbreaking, "We can't depend on anyone else," a reference to declining state funds for community colleges.
Other forthcoming projects include renovations and expansions to:
- Kazen Center, $6.3 million. This work will establish new kitchen and serving areas and a new student health services section.
- Elpha Lee West Building, $2.8 million. This will house administrative offices and a new trustees board room.
- Athletic Housing Village, $1.1 million
- Post Buildings 34 and 35, $1.4 million
- Post 14, a former hospital, $600,000
Oddly, the renovation plan was designed in part to accommodate anticipated higher enrollments in the future, but enrollment declined by 7 percent in the fall of 2012.
Read more about this topic: Laredo Community College
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“There is, I think, no point in the philosophy of progressive education which is sounder than its emphasis upon the importance of the participation of the learner in the formation of the purposes which direct his activities in the learning process, just as there is no defect in traditional education greater than its failure to secure the active cooperation of the pupil in construction of the purposes involved in his studying.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)