At the college board of trustees meeting Wednesday, the board voted to purchase a 31-acre, bank-owned property at 2565 Parallel Drive for the $7.5 million project, according to Mendocino College President and Superintendent Kathy Lehner.
Lehner said Friday that the college is canceling its contract for a 14-acre site at 3360 Merritt Road in Kelseyville, which farmer Greg Hanson had offered for $770,000. In June the college had entered escrow on the property.
The Parallel Drive site originally was the college's first location, said Lehner.
The college has agreed to buy the property for $1 million, said Lehner. The land currently is owned by Arizona-based Goldwater Bank, which purchased the land in a foreclosure sale in August for $1.6 million, as Lake County News has reported.
Lehner said the college had offered the property's previous owner, Tom Adamson, $1.53 million for the site. Adamson had wanted $2.9 million and the deal fell through. Later Adamson lost the property.
The per-acre price comparison for the two properties was just over $32,000 per acre for Parallel Drive and $55,000 for Merritt Road, said Lehner.
She said the college intends to build a 20,000-square-foot facility, which is double the size of its current leased location at 1005 Parallel Drive.
Another plus for the college and the Lakeport location is a cost sharing agreement approved by the Lakeport City Council on Tuesday for a water main extension to the Parallel Drive site.
Both Lehner and Mike Adams, the college's facility director, addressed the council on Tuesday in favor of the agreement.
Originally, the college was expecting to have to pay $500,000 for the entire project, but the city has agreed to pay 50 percent of the water main's total projected costs of $550,000, said Lehner. She said that was an offer the college couldn't pass up.
She said a full environmental impact report doesn't need to be done for Parallel Drive, but they do need to update a mitigated negative declaration on the site that was finalized more than 12 months ago. Lehner said that process isn't expected to be very costly.
“Everything's been cleared to proceed,” Lehner said.
On Thursday Lehner, Adams and other college administrators met with community members in Kelseyville, where a community effort had developed to win the college over for the Merritt Road site, to update them on the decision and the process.
Lehner said a district architect, TLCD Architecture of Santa Rosa, will do an initial design for the project. TLCD is one of two firms recently named to work on the new Lakeport courthouse.
The college will then issue a request for proposals for the contractor to build the campus. One of the criteria for those proposals, said Lehner, will be the use of local subcontractors as much as possible.
She said the college wrote its request for proposals for its new solar field in the same manner, “and it really worked out well for us.”
One of the first things the college must do now in the next part of the process is file its architectural plans with the Division of the State Architect. Lehner said the college hopes to have the final plan submitted by July of 2010. It's expected the state will take about six months to complete the review process.
The parking lots and infrastructure will need to be constructed first, said Lehner. The college may use modulars on the site so they can leave the leased site at 1005 Parallel Drive.
“There's a possibility that we could break ground in the summer of 2011,” said Lehner.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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