CCSN opens science building

Jennifer Knight

Friday, Sept. 5, 2003 | 9:40 a.m.

Stalled fund-raising, budget cuts and a lightning strike didn't stop the Community College of Southern Nevada from opening a new science building Thursday.

The building is expected to supply needed space to the school's growing nursing program.

CCSN officially opened its fifth academic building on its Charleston campus, even though it is still unfinished. Twelve teaching labs and 10 classrooms that are finished in the $20 million, 75,000-square-foot science center will alleviate a bottleneck of students who had trouble getting into science classes, officials said.

"We were maxed out," said Marty Hicks, CCSN's dean of biological science. "One of the biggest pushes to open this was to accommodate more nursing students."

At the same time that the college faces increasing enrollment, a statewide program to double nursing enrollment kicked in this year, making the building, as one official put it, "a dream come true." But getting the project funded and constructed was a nightmare, Hicks said.

"There are a few unfinished labs when we ran out of funding," Hicks said. "We also have a few (unfinished) offices as well."

CCSN is about $500,000 short of furnishing some of its labs and all of its faculty offices because of legislative cuts and a lack of private donations.

The college had a tough time getting the building up and running because the project's budget, originally $35 million, was cut to $17 million by the Legislature.

Gone are the unique architectural flourishes that were in the original plans -- a double-helix staircase, stone flooring, a planetarium and landscaping that would have displayed the plants from deserts around the world.

"We shaved $1 million off of the budget to get those labs completed," said Patty Charlton, CCSN's vice president of finance and administration.

Attempts to raise the money from the private sector were unsuccessful because competition for money around town was too fierce, Charlton said.

Under a tight deadline to break ground, the project hit another snag when the construction bidding date was set for Sept. 11, 2001. After the terrorist attacks, many of the companies pulled their bids because they had New York ties, Charlton said.

"It's not been an easy go," said Ron Remington, CCSN's president.

Remington said it was necessary though to get the building open to accommodate the influx of students.

In its three years of existence, CCSN's nursing program has gone from admitting 40 students to accepting 64 students a semester, and enrollment throughout the college is expected to increase by about 8.6 percent by 2005, according to university system projections.

Still, problems seemed to persist up until the opening of the science building. Recently the building was struck by lightning, but it was not damaged, Charlton said.

The college will now try to raise the additional funds to finish the rest of the building so it can become fully operational.

"The stuff we went through was worth it," Charlton said. "The faculty made the sacrifice. That's why there are no faculty offices. That's why we have classrooms for our students. That's why we have labs. That's dedication."