OTC Ozark campus plans take shape

Ozarks Technical Community College’s nearly five-year-old plans for a south campus in Ozark are taking shape.
Since OTC’s board of trustees Feb. 7 approved architectural renderings for the Ozark campus’ first phase, a $12.9 million development, school officials have worked to secure Missouri Department of Natural Resources infrastructure approvals.
The first bit of good news from DNR – approving the school’s sewer plans – arrived in the mail March 21, said Dave Roling, OTC’s vice president of administration and business. The second step – approving the water plans – is expected this week.
If all goes as planned, school officials would send the water and sewer infrastructure contract to bid in May, and crews would begin constructing the systems in early June. Engineering firms working on the preliminary infrastructure plans are Larose & Schober Engineering, Archer Engineers, Anderson Engineering and Allstate Consultants.
Meanwhile, the first building’s physical concept, designed by Hagerman New Urbanism, is set for the school’s 78-acre parcel at highways 65 and 14 that it bought in October 2000. The 60,000-square-foot building is expected to hold about 2,000 students.
Construction is set to begin in late summer, and the targeted completion date is June 2007. For the college, it’s not a moment too soon, as student demand at the main campus – the corner of Chestnut Expressway and Sherman Ave. in Springfield – is rapidly outpacing available space.
“I can tell you that in the fall of 2004 and spring of 2005, we had consistent 7 (percent) to 8 percent growth in student enrollment, and credit-hour enrollment growth approached 11 percent,” Roling said. “We continue to study demand so that the south campus first phase and subsequent phases will allow us to meet that demand.”
The school had enrollment of 8,959 in the fall, eight times the 1,198 students enrolled in fall 1991. Those enrollment figures are expected to grow 33 percent, to 12,000 students, in fall 2010 and reach 14,000 students by fall 2015.
But the new campus is intended to do more than just stem the overflow from Springfield. School officials have planned 10 to 14 additional phases after the first phase is complete.
“It’s important to remember that OTC doesn’t just serve Springfield,” said Bo Hagerman, project architect. “They serve 14 school systems, basically, in the whole southwest Missouri area. The reason I mention that is because it may seem odd to locate this development south of Springfield, but it really is still central to the area that the school serves.”
In addition to its main Springfield campus, the school has three “off-campus education centers,” two to the south in Branson and Ozark, and a Lebanon center to the northwest. The Ozark center has around 275 students.
Roling said the new Ozark campus is intended to provide a more convenient location for students in southern Greene County, as well as those in Christian and Taney counties.
Additionally, Hagerman said OTC’s facilities are well under the amount of square footage needed to accommodate the student population. According to American School & University Magazines’ seventh annual Maintenance & Operations Cost Study, the national average for college facilities is 219 square feet per student; OTC has about 150 square feet per student.
“So they get a lot of use out of the square footage that they have,” Hagerman said. “You might say they are a little under-built, so hopefully this will be able to fix that.”
Funding for the first phase has already been promised by the board of trustees. The largest chunk, $7.9 million, will come from the school’s reserve fund, while
the remaining $5 million will be
obtained either from the state or from a school-issued bond, which would be paid back in $400,000 annual increments.
While Phase I is undergoing final designs, Roling said the timetable for the next stage of development is yet to be determined.
“Phase II will depend on two things: funding, and student demand at that time,” he said. “Quite honestly, it’s certainly within the realm of possibility that while we’re in the construction of Phase I, student demand could present itself in such a way that we’d need to begin Building II. But that would really depend on funding and student demand.”
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