Lone Star breaks ground on satellite campus

Photo by Suzanne Rehak

The Lone Star College System is poised to start construction on a full-service satellite college center near the border that separates the Cypress-Fairbanks and Katy independent school districts on Clay Road.
The 83,000-square-foot Lone Star College-Cypress Center at 19710 Clay will serve as a satellite to the larger Lone Star College-CyFair, which is located at the corner of West and Barker-Cypress roads.
Cypress Center is necessary, say college system officials, because they are running out of space at the 450,000-square-foot Lone Star College-CyFair College campus.
The college's student population has reached 15,000 between that campus and the Fairbanks satellite center at U.S. 290 and West Little York Road.
A sizeable group converged on the cleared 11-acre Cypress Center site last week to break ground on the project.
We have not formally started construction but it is imminent," said Bob Williams, Lone Star College CyFair's vice president of administration. We are waiting on final permitting from Harris County. It could be early next week. We are still on target with our projected schedule."
C.F. Jordan Construction is the general contractor on the $14 million project.
Cypress Center is set to open in fall 2011, said Williams, and would be designed to accommodate about 3,000 students.
The two-story building will include a 13,500-square-foot workforce lab area, 14 classrooms, eight computer labs, two training rooms, one biology lab, one craft lab and a student services area with tutoring, testing, registration and bookstore services as well as administrative, staff and faculty offices.
The Cypress Center will be a full-service satellite center like the Fairbanks Center, Williams said.
This site has twice as much acreage as our Fairbanks Center," Williams said. We will incorporate a lot of greenspace on the back side of the campus with sports fields and recreational areas for students."
Our vision is to offer students the feel of campus life," he said.
Williams said the building design incorporates green concepts," including solar panels and wind turbines.
We hope to use the building as a living teaching environment," Williams said. For example, the solar panels will be used as a class instructional tool, while providing electricity to building."
Williams said the college is also positioned for grant opportunities that would provide funding for green equipment that could be added to the building.
It is going to be a unique building," he said.
Deana Sheppard, Lone Star College-CyFair's associate vice president of college centers, said the Cypress Center will open with core university transfer, transitional studies, English for Speakers of Other Languages, continuing education and workforce courses.
The workforce lab will be home to the welding, drafting, electronics, machining, mechatronics and Geographic Information Systems programs.
Sheppard said the Cypress Center will open with full-time faculty members, but will also add them according to student enrollment needs.
We believe we will open with a healthy student enrollment," she said.
The goal is to open a satellite center in each of Cy-Fair ISD's four quadrants, with the main campus at the center, Williams said.
The Fairbanks Center covers the southeast quadrant, the Cypress Center the southwest, and Lone Star College System's new multi-university University Park at Texas 249 and Louetta Road will cover the northeast sector.
The northwest quadrant would be the next area of focus, he said.