LOGANSPORT — Ivy Tech Community College will soon start work on a new master plan that will shape growth at its six Kokomo region sites for the next decade.
Region officials are negotiating with an architectural planning firm that will oversee and drive the process, said Mike Karickhoff, executive director of facilities for Ivy Tech Kokomo Region.
At the Kokomo region’s board of trustees meeting last month, officials said bids for the work ranged from about $70,000 to $250,000.
The plan will be a comprehensive study of the college’s facilities, the sites they’re on and the communities they’re in, Karickhoff said. He referred to it as a “road map” for the next 10 years.
“The plan is a living document that’s used with trustees, with legislators, with donors,” Karickhoff said.
The last one was completed Nov. 21, 2002. Its impacts can easily be seen, Karickhoff said.
“We never would have gotten the building in Logansport if we didn’t have plans in place to show how Logansport was growing,” he said.
And that wasn’t even the focus of the last plan, said Steve Daily, chancellor of the college’s Kokomo region.
That plan focused mainly on the Kokomo campus and its facilities.
“As we look back at that plan, it’s kind of comical,” Daily said.
Officials knew they would have to buy two parcels of land in Kokomo, but the plan also called for a new building — something they didn’t end up needing, Daily said.
Instead, the school bought three empty buildings for less than $3 million, adding about 200,000 square feet of space to its campus, the chancellor said.
Other area campuses have grown since the last plan.
A $16.6 million, 81,000-square-foot facility opened in Logansport in 2010.
The Rochester and Tipton sites didn’t even exist in 2002, Daily said.
Neither did the one in Peru. Now Peru has more than 30,000 square feet of space.
Daily said the new plan will look at whether that site is big enough.
“It will look at how long campuses can stay where they’re at,” Daily said.
Peru’s site is housed in an elementary school that sits right in the middle of a neighborhood.
“Parking is a problem,” he said. “The building can accommodate 500 students, but there isn’t enough parking for that many people.”
The plan will also look at what kind of space is needed at each campus. Daily said that may change substantially in the next 10 years.
More and more students are choosing online courses over face-to-face classes, Daily said.
“Forty percent of our students are taking some online courses now,” he said. “How do we accommodate this new audience?”
He said these students still have to come to the campus, but what they need there will change. Daily said he can envision new facilities or rooms that allow for more testing and tutoring, things that online students might need.
The master plan will explore that issue, he said.
Karickhoff said the plan will also make projections on what kinds of programs should be offered. The college wants course offerings at each site “to be reflective of what kind of business and industry you have in the community,” he said.
Ivy Tech intends to have a firm under contract by March, meaning work on the plan could start in April, Karickhoff said.
The process will include gathering input from community leaders, faculty, staff and students, Daily said. The plan should be completed by October.
“It will be a very interactive process,” he said.
• Associate editor Dustin Kass contributed to this report.
© 2024 Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc.