LAKEPORT – In 2007, once it had secured Measure W bond funding, Mendocino Community College began looking for the ideal site for a new $7.5 million Lake Center campus.
In November, the college's board of trustees chose that site – a 31-acre parcel at 2565 Parallel Drive, Lakeport.
College President/Superintendent Kathy Lehner said it's possible the college could break ground on the new campus and a 20,000 square-foot facility in the summer of 2011.
The November vote came after two years of study and effort, a lost opportunity, market fluctuations, the lobbying efforts of community groups and an offer from a bank that was hard to refuse.
The Parallel Drive site actually had been the college's first choice back in 2007, when it approached Tom Adamson, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based developer who owned the property at that time along with a nearby 99-acre parcel.
But after negotiations and site studies, the effort to purchase the site broke down earlier this year when the college offered Adamson $1.5 million. He wanted $2.9 million and the deal fell through.
The college board then began exploring other options, including a 14-acre parcel at 3360 Merritt Road that farmer Greg Hanson offered to sell the college for $770,000. In June, the college entered escrow on that property.
At around the same time, a group of Kelseyville residents and business people formed to lobby the college leadership, creating a Web site and visiting board meetings to speak in favor of the Merritt Road location.
Then in August, Adamson lost the Parallel Drive property to foreclosure. Goldwater Bank of Arizona purchased the 31-acre parcels for $1.6 million in a foreclosure sale.
The bank, in concert with Lakeport city officials, began meeting with college officials to get the negotiations back on track.
It worked: The bank agreed to sell the college the land for $1 million. As part of the deal, the city of Lakeport agreed to begin the annexation process on the nearby 99-acre parcel that Adamson also had owned and lost, and which the bank purchased.
As an added incentive, in early November the Lakeport City Council approved a memorandum of understanding with the college that includes sharing 50-percent of the estimated $550,000 cost to bring a water main extension to the Parallel Drive campus site.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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