Downtown debut: South Plains College holds first classes at new Lubbock campus
After more than two years of preparation, South Plains College opened its doors and welcomed students to its new Lubbock Downtown Center on Monday.
The downtown campus is located at 1625 13th St. in the former Lubbock City Hall and offers arts and sciences courses previously offered at SPC Reese Center. After finding a parking spot in the packed lot, students spent time Monday arranging last-minute schedule changes and finding classrooms.
"We've basically been giving a lot of directions this morning. With three floors, students kind of know where to go, but not exactly," said Kara Martinez, dean of the downtown campus. "It's a big building. It looks a lot bigger on the inside than it does on the outside."
The building features 78,000 square feet of renovated space and around 50 classrooms, making up SPC's fifth campus. Students at the downtown center have access to everything they might need to be successful in higher education, including registration and academic advisory services, tutoring and technology assistance. Students can even check out a laptop with the on-site library staff if they don't have one of their own to use.
Adrian Oropeza, a sophomore philosophy major at SPC and Lubbock native, said the downtown location, though unfamiliar for now, will be an asset for his education in the long run.
"It's a little bit to get used to, of course — it's a big building," Oropeza said. "It's like going to high school for the first time. It's like, I don't know anyone here and this building is new to me. But other than the obvious first-day jitters, I really like it."
South Plains College closed on the building about 25 months ago after the City of Lubbock began its move into Citizens Tower. At the time, Lubbock was the largest city in Texas without a college campus downtown.
The Lubbock Economic Development Alliance gave two separate payments of $5 million, totaling $10 million, for the project, the A-J reported at the time of the purchase. The CH Foundation also donated $5 million, which together aimed to cover the cost of turning the facility into a college campus.
LEDA will also give six separate annual gifts of $500,000 to SPC for administrative help during the first six years of SPC’s occupancy, according to A-J archives.
Martinez said the college's new central location will be a boon to SPC's nearly 1,600 students, especially those in Lubbock who can't make the trek to Reese Center or Levelland. And, she hopes the campus will also benefit its neighbors.
"With the enrollment increase, this was a good decision," Martinez said. "We hope students will like being downtown, and we hope downtown will like us being here. I think the restaurants are definitely going to see a benefit. Any coffee shops that go up, businesses that cater to students, I think they're all going to see the benefit of having all these students down here."
The former SPC Lubbock Center located at 3907 Ave. Q has been renamed the SPC Lubbock Career and Technical Center. The Reese Center campus will continue to house several health sciences programs.
"The SPC Levelland campus continues to be our flagship campus and offers the same Arts and Sciences programs and courses it has for nearly 65 years," said Dane Dewbre, executive director of marketing and communications in a statement last week. "This is simply a relocation of courses from one of our other centers."
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: First classes held Monday at South Plains College Lubbock Downtown Center
