Trustees of Gavilan College held an evening public meeting Jan. 26 downtown at the college annex in the Briggs Building to discuss Hollister’s request to consider a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the city and college to possibly build an instructional facility on the lot at the corner of Hillcrest Road and McCray Street, known as the Leatherback property.
Also on the agenda were updates on the possibility of an instructional facility on the corner of Fairview Road and Airline Highway, across the street from Ridgemark Golf and Country Club; and discussion of the Coyote Valley-South Bay Regional Public Safety Consortium Project.
Kent Child, a trustee from San Benito County who was appointed to the board of trustees in 2005, started off the meeting asking for public comments on topics not on the agenda. Hollister Mayor Ignacio Velazquez was the first to brief the trustees and others in the room about what the city and county are trying to accomplish concerning a “tele-center or education library.”
“If we can find a way to partner with the community college, high schools, the city and county perhaps we can get a building built that would help us bring college services to our community sooner rather than later, and help the high school with overcrowding,” Velazquez said. “We’d have enough classrooms to hopefully meet the goal of 1,000 full-time students for the college to take our community from 18 percent that have a bachelor’s degree to 40 or 45 percent so we can start competing for the high-paying jobs.”
With no further public comments, Child asked Bill Avera, Hollister city manager, to speak on the Leatherback property MOU. Avera detailed the history of the property going back to its purchase from Leatherback Industries Paper Mill. The intent was to reuse the property in accordance to the city’s general plan. He said the city has gone through numerous requests for proposals for different kinds of businesses. Most recently, the city has hoped the property would become a Gavilan satellite campus up to two-and-a-half times larger than the one in the Briggs Building.
“The city of Hollister recently entered into an exclusive, no negotiation agreement with TTI Development, Inc.,” Avera said. “There are some performance standards within it. One of those standards is getting Gavilan College’s buy-in on the location and to give some security to TTI that this is a project that they want to embark on. It’s a private-public partnership and it’s sort of confusing because there are actually three parties involved. We have a draft of an MOU and it’s going to take all of us to jump off that bridge together.”
The city manager said the city cannot accomplish the project on its own and the developer wants assurance from Gavilan that there is some interest before the company starts to “spend real money on whether or not the project is feasible.”
Avera said there have been conversations with Gavilan and TTI understands that lease rates for the facility have to be similar to what the college is presently paying at the Briggs location. He said the project, at this time, is still being looked at as a private development and the city needs to consider that path as it waits for some assurance that Gavilan is committed.
He assured the trustees that the entire property is “technically clean,” but if any footing should go beyond four feet deep perhaps another environmental assessment would be required.
Child brought up the Field Act, which mandates earthquake-resistant construction for California schools, and wondered if that might apply to the property in regard to a long-range lease agreement. Fred Harris, vice president of Gavilan campus services, said if the district does lease or rent the building with no intent to purchase it, the act does not come into play, which he said was a recent development.
Harris asked Avera if the Department of Toxic Substances had been involved in the mitigation of the site. Avera said it had. Harris said a four-foot footing seemed shallow for a two-story building and wondered if there might be environmental issues. TTI’s Ted Intravia said he has built taller buildings and there haven’t been any issues. Avera added that most buildings in the area were sitting on 12-inch concrete slabs rather than footings, so there shouldn’t be any issues.
Child, who lives in Hollister, noted potential traffic issues on Hillcrest Road will need to be studied. Avera said his wife worked at Leatherback and he remembered how difficult it was to make a left turn onto Hillcrest. He said the entrance will most likely be a right turn only. To avoid issues on McCray Street, Avera said the city’s Complete Streets Program is taking into account driving patterns from Hillcrest to Walgreens. Child said his main issue with the property was the adjacent industrial site, but felt that the proposed building would be far enough from it so there would be no real concern, other than aesthetically.
Avera emphasized that the city would want to know “sooner than later” if Gavilan is interested in moving forward on the property.
“That’s the only reason we’re here,” he said. “We want to know if we’re wasting time, then let us know now. But if this is a common goal of the community then it’s prudent for us to go into this together.”
Child said the college isn’t pursuing the project as an idle exercise and it needs to find a way to grow and expand services to students in the county. He said several times during the meeting that any growth would be in “baby steps” and not “quantum leaps.”
“Part of the challenge is how we can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear because that is not a lovely site,” he said. “What it could be 10 years out could be a whole different set of circumstances. Right now, it’s a ragged-around-the-edges industrial community.”
Intravia said over time things change and he anticipates the Leatherback property will change as the surrounding properties change. He said part of the design includes a 1,000-square-foot coffee shop or Internet café to attract both students and surrounding workers and residents. Child and Intravia also discussed sound-suppression possibilities.
Hollister resident Marty Richman said there is more to the discussion than, “we’ve got to do this.” He said there is a legal obligation to do it through the Measure E bond, which, he said, convinced residents that it would fund a local junior college. He estimated that by the time the funding is over $25 million will have been put into the bond.
Richman said he doubts if potential students will drive from outside of Hollister to come to a junior college here. He said the facility was supposed to be for local residents.
“It’s been 12 years this March since that bond was voted on and I believe you had the money in less than a year and we’ve got nothing,” he said. “I don’t want to wait another 12 or 14 years for the decision-making process. I know, when you set your mind to it, the same way you did at Coyote Valley, you can do it in whatever timeframe you want to. The people here need this facility more than any of your other locations.”
Richman emphasized how long the process has taken by saying people who were in the second grade when the bond passed have since graduated from high school.
“And now they’re riding the bus to Gavilan to get an education,” he said. “I think it’s outrageous and all this government nonsense about taking forever is just a stall tactic. If we don’t get started we will never get there.”
Kathy Zanger, a former Gavilan trustee, asked the current board for a timeline to make the decision about Leatherback, saying it was only fair. Child started to explain that a decision involves a long, drawn-out financial arrangement, involving the city and others, but Zanger was having none of it as she interrupted him several times insisting it was possible for the board to give an estimate of when it would move forward.
“You can’t just sit there and say nothing,” she said. “You have to give a timeline, that’s reasonable.”
Child listened, said he understood what she was asking, and then moved on to ask for other speakers. John Bessa, a retired educator and former high school counselor, said he was concerned by what he was not hearing, namely there was no “talking about the people.” He said many in the community would benefit from a community college.
“A community college is the doorway to success for many in this county,” he said. “The socio-economics in this county dictate that a community college should be the highest priority, and we need it now.”
Bessa said the working community is primarily made up of adults who commute long distances every day and would greatly benefit by having a chance to go back to school. He said if the community college were built in the city people could walk to their classes.
Juli Vieira, president and CEO of the San Benito County Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Bureau, said she had taken four classes over the last year-and-a-half, which involved traveling to Morgan Hill after work, often resulting in 12- to 16-hour days.
“I think there are a lot of other people in San Benito County that would take a lot more classes if they were available,” she said. “I’d probably take more classes if I didn’t have to go to Morgan Hill. This is something our community needs.”
Child moved on to the second agenda item, discussing the possibilities of partnering with Ridgemark. Bruce Lewis, general manager of Ridgemark, spoke on the benefits of using the facility on a short-term bases if Gavilan were to build a campus across the street. He said the country club’s new owner was education-oriented and even mentioned the possibility of attracting a number of students from Vietnam because of his many contacts with that community.
Lewis pointed out many partnership possibilities to teach Gavilan students skills in hospitality, restaurant, and golf course management, as well as culinary skills and availability of tennis courts. He said the facility has banquet rooms that could also serve as classrooms. He invited the trustees to come to Ridgemark to see first-hand what it has to offer the college.
“You can’t make a living off a community without giving back to that community, and this gives us an opportunity to have our fingerprints all over your success, as a partner,” he said.
Dick Oliver, a partner in Morgan Hill-based Dividend Homes, said the company’s association with Gavilan went back to 2007. In 2008, he said, the builder sold 78 acres on the corner of Fairview Road and Airline Highway to Gavilan, while retaining 60 acres next to the college site to build homes. He said the college went through an environmental review process that included the entire 138 acres and was approved in 2008. Then the county said it wanted to do its own environmental review of the 60-acre portion of the joint venture, which was approved in 2012. He said the two entities would share a joint entrance and open space. He also said there were future plans to possibly build housing for college teachers.
Oliver said the most serious issues involved the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and U.S. Fish and Wildlife, which involved processes, as he described, that are extensive and extremely costly. He said in 2015 the builder received approval to have a ranch serve as a mitigation bank (wetland, stream, or other aquatic resource area) for both projects.
“That was the keystone for either the college or ourselves progressing to have that approval,” he said. “We’ve been advised, as of last week, the last permit that we need is three weeks away. We have received a development agreement, signed and approved by the county, and that process requires us to proceed and we are doing that.”
Oliver said the company plans to build approximately 200 homes, and there has to be pathways through the development to the college, and emergency egress from the property onto Airline Highway. He said the earliest that county approval might happen would be the Fall of 2016, and construction of the first phase of the residential project would begin in Spring 2017.
“The whole project was designed so either the college or we as a residential developer can proceed even if the other didn’t,” Oliver said. “If the college is ready next year, it can start and we won’t hold you up. If the college is delayed, we can start without being delayed.”
Richman wanted to know how many full-time students would be required in order to “get support from Sacramento.” Harris said 500 full-time equivalent students would be required to be eligible for state capital outlay (money spent to acquire, maintain, repair, or upgrade capital assets) funds and 1,000 students for other funds, as well as a bond and matching funds. Harris said once the last environmental step is passed, a master planning process for the campus will begin.
Richman still questioned when 500 full-time students might materialize, and wondered whether there were that many presently attending the Gavilan annex at the Briggs Building. Child assured him there were close to 500 already attending. Richman wanted to know if there was any estimate of when a “full campus” might happen. Child answered that it depends on how a full campus is defined, going on to say that many people consider the annex with five classrooms as the Gavilan campus.
“The term ‘campus’ is relative,” Child said. “In the community college system of California, you have the first, smallest entity, the education site. The next step, and that’s where we’re trying to get, and it looked a hell of a lot different nine or 10 years ago when Measure E was going through the process before the entire nightmare of the recession, but it looks like we were just on the stair step of having enough potential students.”
He said the average age of community college students is closer to 30 than 18. He challenged earlier assumptions that students wouldn’t come from outside the county, saying he taught at the annex and said that while the majority came from Hollister, he had students coming from as far as Morgan Hill, Santa Cruz and Salinas. He even addressed the assumption that students would want to walk to their campus, saying few, if any, including himself, walks to the annex.
“Our whole society has got to change before it gets to the point that it’s walking- and biking-friendly,” Child said. “A subset of the community has been very vocal and proactive with the future of San Benito County that has the mindset that there has to be a full campus in downtown Hollister. Where are you going to put it? The state and the community college system have criteria and minimum parcel size for a campus. Educational center, not a problem. Campus, huge problem.”
He when the process first began to possibly build a Hollister campus it was thought it might take up to 10 years. But that was before the recession, Child said.
“Who knows how long it’s going to take now to have enough critical mass of students and public financing to make that quantum leap from this small, temporary facility,” he said. “The next step is to get up to 1,000 full-time equivalent students (which is needed to fund staffing and operating costs). None of us have a timeline of when it’s going to happen.”
Meanwhile, Child said residents do have a community college. It just happens to be in Gilroy.
“There’s still resentment in San Benito Count, and justifiably, to some degree,” he said and then told the long story of how Gavilan came to be and that it has now reached more than full capacity. He said the last three presidents of the college have been trying to find a location for a new campus as the population continued to move south. He said the intention has long been to build more on the present campus and stay a single campus, with two smaller campuses in Morgan Hill and Hollister.
He said residents in both communities refused to support a bond to renovate old buildings and add new ones at the Gilroy campus, so the hunt began to find properties elsewhere for future campuses, which he said everyone thought might happen within 20 years, but now says it’s anyone’s guess when that might happen.
“I hope to get to see a really nice educational center within the next five to 10 years,” he said.
Citizens’ Oversight committee openings: There are presently openings on the committee that oversees spending associated with the Measure E Bond. The committee informs the public about expenditures of bond revenues, and the Gavilan Joint Community College District’s compliance with Prop. 39, among other duties. Interested individuals can apply by filling out an application here.
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