COD board quiets crowd with Berg Center plan
The Berg Instructional Center hosts many of the classrooms on the College of DuPage campus and is described by faculty as the heart of the college.
Thursday night, trustees gave preliminary approval to give the college a heart transplant.
The problem is, the building is notoriously thought of as hopelessly out of date with the college's space needs and modern approaches to education. The facility is about 35 years old.
A standing-room-only crowd of students and staff members filled the board room Thursday evening. They planned to slam home the idea that it's time to make some serious changes to the building.
Those speeches were tossed as the board unexpectedly pitched and gave preliminary approval to massive renovations and additions to the center.
The plan would renovate some 40 percent of the current building. It would then add about 80,000 square feet of new space through construction. Also envisioned is a new state-of-the-art student union, a 30,000-square-foot community center and upgrades to the adult education facilities on campus.
The plan is likely to cost more than $80 million for construction alone.
Board Chairman Michael McKinnon said the project would be a "perfect solution" to everything students, faculty and staff members want to see.
"We're not like other community colleges," McKinnon said. "We're not a community college of 5,000 or 10,000 students where you have a couple small rooms. We're more like the University of Illinois at Chicago, a commuter school."
McKinnon said the entire project could be funded without raising taxes or tuition. Instead, McKinnon proposed keeping a $5-per-credit hour tuition increase that is set to expire in 2012. The school would use it to pay back bonds it would issue to fund the construction.
The information was completely knew to most of the faculty and students in the room. However, several of them used public comment periods to applaud the seeming solution.
Trustees are slated to approve the building concept at their next meeting.
Berg: Renovate without raising tuition, taxes?