Governor announces tech center is in budget
	Governor Ernie Fletcher

By SCOTT TAYLOR
Editor

After much anticipation and years of promises followed by rejection, the Technical Center (TC) project seems to be in the governor's budget for HCC. This $13 million capitol project will place the aforementioned facility adjacent to the AS building, and will expand the parking lot to accommodate the structure.

The process to get the TC standing, however, requires more anticipation and years. "My personal guess is that the building will stand in the fall of 2008," commented Dr. David Brauer, dean of academic affairs.
"In the next month, we will make a statement about what we want. Then we will select an architect and seek bids from them. We will then work with the architect on the design, which will be a six-month to one-year process," added Brauer.

Brauer added that the construction process will begin, starting with accepting bids from construction companies to estimate the costs they will charge for accommodating the architectural design. "The construction company bidding process will take approximately 12 to 18 months," added Brauer.

When the ground-breaking process starts, the weather is likely to be the leading determining factor of time. The highway work on 41 and lacking of a partially-constructed Wal-Mart Supercenter are examples of weather impeding construction.

Once the TC is operational, the training room and office of Joe Razanno, industrial trainer, will move to the TC. The Student Success Center (SSC, former LSC), will also be relocated, along with the Adult Learning Center (See related story on page ???).
The Pennel Street locations of the Industrial Maintenance programs will move on campus.

The building itself will house four to five general-use classrooms. In addition to a standard classroom setting, the building will hopefully also house a tier-style lecture hall accommodating classes with large enrollments of about 60 students. Some rooms may be specially built to allow large pieces of equipment, machinery, or vehicles to be housed for special technical projects. For example, a rather large room with a plethora of power outlets may allow for a technical class to bring in equipment HCC previously could not support.

The TC will be approximately 60,000 square feet. According to Brauer, to put that into perspective, the AT building is approximately 45,000 square feet.