Site to comprise 28,800 square feet and include classrooms and facilities for police academy program
Published in the December 23, 2015 – January 5, 2016 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Marty Cheek
Photo by Marty Cheek
Mayor Steve Tate, far right, joined members of the Gavilan College Board of Trustees, Chamber of Commerce President and CEO John Horner and other dignitaries for the official groundbreaking for Gavilan’s new campus in south San Jose.
Dignitaries including State Sen. Bill Monning and Morgan Hill Mayor Steve Tate came together in a muddy 55-acre field on a foggy Dec. 4 morning to shovel dirt and celebrate the beginning of construction for Gavilan Community College’s new Coyote Valley Education Center campus.
Located at 560 Bailey Road in San Jose, when finished the site will comprise 28,800 square feet in five single-story modular buildings, and will include classrooms, and specialized facilities for the police academy program. Funding for the site comes from Bond Measure E which voters passed in 2004 to upgrade the Gilroy campus and to establish future campuses at Coyote Valley, the northern part of the Gavilan College district, and San Benito County, the district’s southern end, where land has also been purchased for a campus.
The first phase of the Coyote Valley campus is estimated to cost $21 million.
“Seeing the progression of the planning and promise of Measure E now taking shape in Coyote Valley is exciting. At the groundbreaking ceremony we got a glimpse of the space that will serve the community for decades to come,” said Gavilan Vice President Kathleen Rose. “Students attending high school in Morgan Hill will be able to see the campus take shape, and can look forward to attending college classes in a beautiful and convenient location.”
Rose encouraged residents to look for outreach information about the career and transfer programs that will be offered at the campus.
“The college went through a four-year, rigorous site selection process prior to acquire 55 acres in Coyote Valley in 2006,” said Jan Bernstein Chargin, public information officer for Gavilan. “When completely built out — a 10-to-30 year process, depending upon the availability of state funding — the site could be home to a full-service community college accommodating up to 10,000 students.”
With completion of the first phase of development, the Coyote Valley site will become the location for public safety training for police officer recruits which makes up about 10 percent of Gavilan College’s enrollment and brings in $2.4 million every year in apportionment revenue from the state of California.
Photo by Marty Cheek
Workers stand in the construction site of the new Gavilan College campus in Coyote Valley.
Gavilan College is a member of the South Bay Regional Public Safety Training Consortium, a collaborative of nine community college districts. Since 1994 the consortium’s training facility has been located at Evergreen Valley College in San Jose. The Coyote Valley facility will replace the one at Evergreen Valley.
College administrators project the new site will offer evening credit classes in a variety of subjects, beginning in the fall 2016 semester. It could be a convenient option for district commuters wishing to take an evening class after work.
At the ground-breaking event, Gavilan trustees Laura Perry and Jonathan Brusco both said they see the Coyote Valley campus as a milestone in the community college’s expansion in the South Valley.
“This site is important because of the growth that we’re facing,” Perry said. “We’re trying to intercept Morgan Hill students who are heading to West Valley and De Anza and Foothill (community colleges) and thinking they’re getting a better education by going north. They drive right by the empty field here and we’re putting in a nice high-tech, brand-new campus here.”
In addition, some of the students from south San Jose can drive south and enjoy easy access to the campus as well, she said.
Brusco said the main Gavilan campus in Gilroy is “quite a trek” for Morgan Hill residents and the Coyote Valley location will make it easier to further their higher education.
“For Morgan Hill, it means that if we get evening courses in here in conjunction with the other Morgan Hill site, it means we can better serve the community,” he said. “To get to the main site is sometimes as challenging as getting to a campus in San Jose depending on where you live. A lot of students work in San Jose, which makes it even more challenging. Once this campus gets built out to capacity in hopefully less than 10 years, we’ll see a massive transformation. We’ll be able to offer programs that really match the needs of businesses and technology around here and really tailor these to this site.”
Perry sees opportunities for Gavilan to work with Silicon Valley companies on the new campus. IBM has a world-famous research center site directly across from the campus site. Cinnabar Hills Golf Club helped in sponsoring the ground-breaking ceremony, and she sees that nearby golf course helping to “rejuvenate” the Gavilan College Foundation by providing a place to hold fundraising events.
“You can have events at Cinnabar that attracts more Silicon Valley money, that’s the opportunity,” she said. “We’re not just going to be a small college in Gilroy trying to get the attention of Silicon Valley, but we’re right across from IBM. It’s a completely different culture and personality (than the Gilroy site).”
The Gavilan trustees also hope to build a facility such as a theater to encourage the arts and personal enrichment programs, she said. This will help generate “marketing leverage” in creating greater awareness of the Coyote Valley site as a destination for the public to enjoy.
“A thank you has to go to the taxpayers because they trusted us when we put the bond measure out and nothing has happened (for years),” Perry said. “And now you can actually see this project coming through rather than taking their money (on the property tax bill) all of these years and wondering what they actually are getting for it. They’ve been very understanding because no one from Morgan Hill has ever contacted me wanting to know where their money went.”
