New HQ going up at Modesto Junior College West Campus

The last of the showplace Measure E building projects at Modesto Junior College is taking shape on Blue Gum Avenue, standing just west of a new signal light needed in part because of the draw of cutting-edge west campus classrooms.

The steel-framed structure, still in its construction-phase version of a dressing gown, will be headquarters for the Yosemite Community College Building. When complete, the building will be wearing a coat of earth-tone stucco in two shades of brown, with windows trimmed in deep red.

Board members donned hard hats Wednesday and toured their future meeting space, a large room with a curved and ramped dais. The spare outline will give way to more luxe surroundings when board Chairman Abe Rojas gavels in the first meeting this fall.

Peering up nearly 20 feet in the center of the room, trustees spied a white metal sheet covered in signatures – their signatures – framed by the gray beams.

“It’s interesting to know there’s a piece of you in this building,” said trustee Lynn Martin. “Of course, nobody’s ever going to see it.”

A lowered ceiling will hide it, part of a varied pattern of high and low toppers throughout that conceal the building’s high-tech circuitry, climate-control conduit and two massive mechanical wells that will service the building, said Acme Construction supervisor Andy Meier.

The sequestered sign is one of many human touches in the $21 million building. Two full kitchens will be available in the break room and by a large meeting room – “We’ll have to ask the culinary program to come in,” said trustee Anne DeMartini with a smile.

The large meeting area can be reached from a back hallway that opens behind the boardroom dais, giving easy access to restrooms, several utility areas and emergency exits.

The new chancellor’s office sits at the rear of the L-shaped floor plan. It includes a reception area, secretarial space, an en-suite bathroom and a large conference room.

A break room will have accordion glass doors opening onto a trellis-covered patio by the main entrance. A nearby wellness room will include a tiny gym and bathroom, optimistically outfitted with showers for those who bike to work.

The showers were part of gaining an eco-friendly certification for the building, said Kitchell Corp. project manager Dan Porter. A parking lot array of solar panels will supply all the building’s electricity, producing enough extra energy in the hot months to offset other utility bills.

“What’s even more exciting is how energy-efficient (the building) is,” said Tim Nesmith, director of facilities, planning and operations for the Yosemite Community College District. Leaving the historic relics whose thin frames leak heat in the winter and swelter in the summer will be a significant money-saver, he said.

The new district headquarters’ 31,400 square feet will replace roughly 28,000 now scattered among four World War II-era buildings showing their age. It will bring together fiscal services, purchasing, facilities planning, human resources and the chancellor’s office.

“They were built in 1942, abandoned in 1945, then they became a state hospital, then we got ’em,” Nesmith said.

After the new headquarters opens, those windows into the past will be history, demolished to open more space for parking as part of a traffic-flow remake still on the Measure E to-do list. Plans call for a new loop road to replace the patchwork of routes around West Campus, along with ancillary buildings for district vehicle maintenance and a data center.

The remakes altogether will total $350 million, a hefty sum made possible by voter approval of Measure E in 2004. Over the past 12 years, the bond has remade YCCD campuses in Modesto and Columbia.

For MJC, the showstopping Science Community Center housing the Great Valley Museum, Glacier Hall and the Ag Pavilion facing Highway 99 is the most visible addition on the west campus.

On the east campus, a new student services center stands on the corner of College and Coldwell avenues, and the old science building has been transformed into the Center for Advanced Technologies.

The old library and Founders Hall look the same, but interior makeovers have updated the classroom space and brought banks of computers into an open and airy library. While many bemoaned the culling of older volumes, students fill the computer desks most days while stacks holding paper volumes stand alone.

In Columbia, work continues on a revamped Manzanita Building at Columbia College through this year, with upgrades to the Juniper and Pinyon buildings scheduled to finish in the fall, according to the latest board update.

All the projects have lowered future costs with greater efficiencies in use and energy requirements. The bulk of the YCCD building boom took advantage of recession-era construction savings to stretch those many dollars further, and the district’s sheer size mitigates the pinch to individual taxpayers.

YCCD sprawls over 4,500 square miles, including an assessed valuation of more than $52 billion, costing a $100,000 home’s owner about $29 in extra property tax this year.

This story was originally published February 14, 2016 at 1:10 PM with the headline "New HQ going up at Modesto Junior College West Campus."