Del Mar College continues to plan for its future Southside campus on Yorktown and Rodd Field. However, it may look a little different than it was first envisioned.
A lot has happened since November 2016, when voters approved a $139 million bond for this project. Arguably, no event had more impact than Hurricane Harvey. Now, it’s back to the drawing table to make sure it stays on track and on budget.
The project design for phase one of Del Mar’s new Southside campus got officially underway Tuesday, when the design team from Gensler/Turner Ramirez Architects briefed the Board of Regents on what comes next.
"First step is to update our master plan for that campus and come up with a new design, a final design," said Trey McCampbell, Chair of the Board of Regents.
The original master plan called for three initial buildings and a central plant to support those structures. On Tuesday, the design team told regents that would cost approximately $101million — more than the $93 million budgeted for this phase. So, there’s now an option that would combine the Main Building and the STEM Building.
McCampbell explained, "It looks like that, particularly with costs rising because of Hurricane Harvey, that maybe instead of three buildings — because of the cost to do each building — maybe combining those buildings some way may give us a better (option) in scale with those tax dollars."
He adds that the regents will make sure they do right by taxpayers in making that decision, saying, "We plan to our budget and we spend within our budget and we stay within our budget."
McCampbell said regents also want to ensure that this design will set up the 90-plus acres of land for potential decades of growth.
"When you start a small starter campus on a big piece of land, how do you make that feel like it’s got a sense of place and presence and is positioned in a way that you can grow and add on to but still achieves what you want to do for students and student success?" he said.
Over the coming months, the design team will take the feedback from regents and come up with some final options for the design. For now, it’s estimated that construction would start in fall of 2019.
