Tuesday afternoon, Del Mar College’s Board of Regents approved the design for the first phase of the new South Side campus. Before the approval, project architects presented renderings and a virtual tour of the new campus to the Board of Regents.
“I thought it was amazing,” Cody Gregg said the Dean of Learning Resources. “It brought the concept of the campus to life.”
“It’s beautiful,” Dr. Shannon Ydoyaga said the Dean of Health Sciences and Professional Education. “The overall design is going to be wonderful for our students.”
The new campus will be built on a 96-acre lot located at Rodd Field Road and Yorktown Boulevard, accommodating up to 15,000 students. It will be home to expanded programs in science, technology, engineering, math and culinary arts.
Some neat features of the project design include a courtyard that will welcome students, staff and visitors, a main building that has a rooftop terrace that overlooks the campus, a new library, and classrooms with energy efficient windows.
As the Board of Regents and others watched the architect’s presentation, the excitement around the new campus continued to grow.
“Today’s review gives us a lot more, a much greater idea of what the campus is going to look like, and what we hope will be something that’s going to be very enticing to students in the future,” Carol Scott said, the Board of Regents Vice Chairman.
In 2016, voters approved a $139 million bond for the new campus. It was an effort to help the growing need of additional classroom space on the city’s south side.
“A lot of our students come from that area of town,” Gregg said. “And it’s [the new campus] really taking our educational opportunities there to them.”
Construction of the new campus is expected to begin in October 2019. The campus should be finished by May 2021, with hopes of beginning the first semester in August 2021.
