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Renovations at Palomar College's Escondido Center began during the summer of 2005. The updated classrooms will only accommodate non-credit courses becuase the building violates the Field Act, which demands a higher structural integrity intended to protect students during an earthquake

Changes continue at Escondido Center

By: Matt Null

Posted: 5/8/06

Like Palomar College's main campus, the Escondido Center has seen its fair share of construction over the past few months.

No new science buildings, but several classrooms have been turned into state-of-the-art "smart" classrooms for non-credit classes. The 5-Star Market is gone and in May the Career Center, located near the new classrooms, will be relocated. The Escondido campus, which has an enrollment of 4,719 students, was originally built in 1979 as a strip mall and was bought by Palomar in the late 1980s.

The new classrooms cannot be used for credit classes because they are not Field-Act approved. The Field Act, which covers grades kindergarten through community college, requires all credit classes to abide by a higher degree of structural integrity with respect to earthquakes, said Director of Facilities and Planning Kelly Hudson-MacIssac. Non-credit classes are not required to adhere to the Field Act.

When the Career Center moves in May, the entire 6.7-acre campus will be used only by Palomar College. Norma Bean, Director of Extended Studies, said the reason for the changes was simple.

"We want this to be a instructional facility," Bean said. "We really want to build this place out to be a college and a model center for the college and we want to show the community we can get it right here, before we go out and do a north and a south site.

Bean said a group of administrators will meet in May to discuss a possible facilities master plan for the center, one similar to the master plan that was adopted by the college in late 2003 for the San Marcos campus.

"I think we will be looking at both the facilities and the instructional program components," Bean said. "We plan to survey the community and see what this immediate community needs and wants from us."

Bean said the group will look at a few projects, including a possible renovation of the admissions counter, a library expansion and six new faculty offices.

She said that the admissions counter would be lowered to look more like the one at the San Marcos campus, and the library would expand into the adjacent Room 200, currently a business lab. The faculty offices, however, currently lack funding.

Possible replacements for the 5-Star Market include a student lounge area or cafeteria. However, Facilities Director Mike Ellis said a structural engineer who was hired to determine its best use, concluded that the building does not meet current code requirements for any use. The engineer said that to continue renting the space could have put the Palomar Community College District in a liability situation if anything happened.

The building is currently used for storage. Ellis said the taskforce will look at the cost of tearing down the building and replacing the 5-Star Market with a new building that could be used for a bookstore, food service operation or a student lounge, among other ideas.

Another project close to completion involves new science classrooms. Recently a "wet-lab" was installed in Room 402 and two classrooms are being retrofitted to become one larger classroom.

Sara Thompson, dean of mathematics and the natural and health sciences, said the new labs will greatly benefit students. In the past, students could only take biology. Once the classrooms are complete, students can take several other science classes such as oceanography and physics.

"They are going to benefit by the number of choices they are going to have, and I think that is real important," Thompson said. "For a student trying to meet their lecture-lab requirements, they really only had one choice."