A standing-room-only crowd of more than 400 attended the grand opening ceremony for Palm Beach State College’s new Dennis P. Gallon Campus in Loxahatchee Groves on Tuesday.
The first campus building is three stories and 50,000 square feet. It welcomed its first 700 students on Monday for the first day of classes.
Dr. Maria Vallejo, the founding campus provost, said PBSC’s fifth campus had been a long time coming. After several false starts, then PBSC President Dr. Dennis Gallon finally requested a feasibility study for the Loxahatchee Groves campus in 2012.
In 2014, the state legislature approved $6 million to begin construction of the first building, which is part of phase 1, and allotted another $9 million in 2016.
“This portion of the first phase cost $30 million,” Vallejo said. “That $30 million included the site design, paving, drainage, utility infrastructure, furniture, fixtures and equipment.”
The college’s master plan calls for two additional buildings in the near future for phase 1 depending on the enrollment and construction funding from the state.
“This is where we will need the community support in Tallahassee,” she said.
PBSC Board of Trustees President Charles K. Cross said it’s not every day that a college gets to dedicate a new campus.
“This is an exciting milestone in Palm Beach State College history,” Cross said. “We especially want to thank the Town of Loxahatchee Groves for welcoming us to your community. We hope that all the residents are pleased with the beautiful campus and that they embrace the opportunities that this campus brings. We are very fortunate to have a forward-thinking leader, President Emeritus Dr. Dennis Gallon, who looked beyond the now more than a decade ago.”
He also credited Gallon’s successor, Ava Parker, for picking up where he left off.
Cross also thanked state elected officials for their support, many of whom attended the opening, local officials, and college staff, who saw that the campus was prepared to accept the 700 students enrolled in classes that began Monday.
Parker said it was wonderful to actually start classes and have the opportunity to speak to students who were sitting at new desks and were excited to have to drive only five minutes rather than 25 minutes to another campus.
“We are so proud that we have 700 students enrolled on the first day of class just yesterday,” she said. “We are putting our hearts and souls into assuring that all five campuses are successful, and that together Palm Beach County will be successful, and not only will we be known for being the first public college in the State of Florida, but the best.”
Florida Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater said he was with Gallon in 2004 when the effort began for a fifth campus. “He did not do this to be named for him,” Atwater said. “He did this because he had vision, and so did the trustees, and so did this community. I want to tell you, it was a long road.”
He said the process hit a setback in 2008 due to the recession.
“Dr. Gallon and this community were not going to give up on the idea and pressed onward, and nine years later, here we are today,” Atwater said.
He gave Gallon credit for not giving up when developing a campus serving the western communities proved to be difficult.
“To his credit, he looked all of us in the eye who have the opportunity on your behalf to appropriate your tax dollars to invest in the future and said: ‘I still see it. I see a place in the central part of this community that needs access, and let it be something that looks down the road, health technology, health information, health science. Let it be something that will enrich this community and give a great gift to people in the future,’” Atwater recalled.
He also credited State Rep. Joseph Abruzzo with keeping the funding in the budget despite pressure on legislators to take the money out of the budget.
“They would not quit, they acknowledged these trustees, and I can point you to one in particular, Joe Abruzzo. Every time they took it out of the budget, Joe slipped it back in,” he said.
Abruzzo said the credit belongs to Gallon and Atwater, along with PBSC Trustee Wendy Link.
“He was the senate president who back in 2008 and 2009 made sure that we got the money in the budget to keep it alive and moving, and he did just that,” Abruzzo said of Atwater. “I played a small part, but it is such a tremendous feeling to be here with all of you knowing that we have this great campus open and 700 students enrolled on the first day.”
Gallon said it was an honor to be recognized by having the campus named after him.
“It has been almost two years now since the retirement that the board of trustees gave me, and at that retirement, Ms. Link read a resolution that this campus would be named after Dennis P. Gallon,” he said. “I was very much shocked and awed by the announcement, and I’m still trying to reconcile the whole process.”
Gallon said he appreciated the support of past and present trustees for their unwavering backing for the fifth campus. “They were in full agreement that the residents of the central western communities were underserved,” he said. “When we presented them with some institutional data, they recommended that the administration move forward with all of the required protocol to get the state to approve this fifth campus.”
The full ribbon-cutting ceremony can be viewed online at news.palmbeachstate.edu.
