Collapse of ed center may be best thing
North County Times 4/9/07
The Temecula Education Center, born of a desire to bring higher education closer to a growing and professional-oriented populace, failed to get traction from the start. The city is quick to blame the developer it chose for the center -- and some fault certainly belongs there -- but officials also need to consider whether the concept is flawed.
While community colleges and small private colleges might have a place, such an educational center would need to offer a good selection of courses from places such as Cal State San Marcos and UC Riverside to be successful. But after expressing some interest in the beginning, neither of the state-run campuses was willing to commit to leasing space in the end.
That left Mt. San Jacinto College, which had recently been shut out of a bid to build a third campus in Wildomar, and Concordia College, a small Irvine-based private college that had recently opened a small set of classrooms in Temecula. And MSJC's $3 million lease for space in the center was so controversial, it led to the firing of its popular new president, who questioned the center's value, and a near mutiny of its faculty.
Two years ago, the city had to step in with money to grade the site in the northwest portion of the city, because the developer was unable to secure the financing to do even that much, and ultimately plowed nearly $6 million into it. That money is not lost, because it increases the value of the 31-acre site, but it was nevertheless an indication of the financial instability of the project.
That precariousness was eventually the project's undoing, as -- after five time extensions and a reduction in the size of the project by half -- the developer, the AGK Group, was unable to meet its obligation to lease even half of the remaining project.
Mayor Chuck Washington said last week that the city still wants an educational center and will hire a consultant to review the project, but we hope that that review includes a full assessment of whether such a project makes sense any more -- if it ever did.
If the city truly wants a higher educational center, why not take another run at the state university system? A full-on four-year "Cal State Temecula" is probably too big of a reach, especially since the city doesn't have 100 acres of land to donate, but how about a satellite campus? City officials insist that despite their reluctance to sign on to the ed center, Cal State San Marcos leaders remain committed to this area. And as a recent analysis by the university confirmed, Southwest County is sending a growing number of students to the San Marcos campus.
Cal State San Marcos began its life more than 30 years ago as a satellite of San Diego State, and after some impressive growth, persuaded the state system to build a full campus there in the early 1990s. Maybe the same path could be followed here.
Southwest County is a growing, prosperous area, with a highly educated population. A higher education center of some sort in this area makes a lot of sense. The reluctance of such obvious tenants as Cal State San Marcos and UC Riverside to sign on to the Temecula Education Center might simply have been an overabundance of caution on their part -- but it might also have come out of a sense that maybe such a multi-college center isn't the best way to serve either their own students or the region.