July 2003

Ran: San Diego Union-Tribune - South County Edition - Wednesday, July 30, 2003

Work starts in National City on its mini campus

By: Chris Moran

NATIONAL CITY - Civic leaders celebrating the start of construction yesterday on a small college campus in downtown National City declared it a catalyst for rehabilitating the heart of town.

The $20 million Education Village, with its 12 classrooms, bookstore, social services center and free dental clinic, is scheduled to open in the fall of 2004.

Southwestern College, San Diego State University and the San Diego County Office of Education will share the campus to offer college-level courses, training for South County public school teachers and a technology academy for high school students in the juvenile court system.

The 3.4 acres on the 800 block of National City boulevard will be an educational hub for as many as 5,000 students.

Southwestern and San Diego State opened a temporary center on the boulevard in 1998. It operates out of a office building and a nearby storefront annex. More than 2,000 students take college classes at the National City center now.

Southwestern;s satellite campuses in National City and San Ysidro give low-income residents easier access to higher education. Satellites are also the college's attempt to drain off traffic from its main campus in Chula Vista. The college has 19,000 students, 17,000 of whom study at the Chula Vista campus.

South County voters approved an $89.4 million school construction bond measure for Southwestern in 2000. The Education Village will be paid for with $12.4 million from that fund and $7.6 million in state money.

The new campus will feature a technology center that will help teachers use computers and online materials more effectively in their classrooms. It's also the site of a future binational education center that will offer a Spanish-language-based curriculum provided via the Internet by the government of Mexico. The so-called plaza comunitaria was inaugurated two weeks ago with a satellite video conference featuring Mexican President Vincente Fox.

This kind of downtown project has been a long time coming, leaders said yesterday.

Southwestern College board President David Agosto drew the heartiest laughs of a feel-good day when he talked about visiting the former Pussycat adult theater on the very lot where he donned a ceremonial hard hat yesterday. By the time he visited, he said, the theater had been converted to a Spanish-language movie house where he watched films to practice his Spanish.

"The area was the center for a good time - but not a good time for those who had to live here, "National City Mayor Nick Inzunza said.

The transformation of a few blocks of National City Boulevard from vice strip to rehabilitated downtown district started decades ago.

Former Mayor Kile Morgan said that during his tenure, from 1966 to 1986, the city bought out the liquor licenses of 22 bars and liquor stores within blocks of the future Education Village.

"It's a miracle what's been done out there," he said.

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