No health insurance? No problem. San Juan College getting campus health center.

While a temporary student health center has been operating since September 2023 in the Cultural Center on the San Juan College campus, college officials took a major step toward opening a permanent home for the facility on Friday with a groundbreaking ceremony for an addition to the school’s Health and Human Performance Center.

The nearly 2,700-square-foot addition will serve as the long-term home of the student health center, a facility being constructed at a cost of $2.2 million. Work on the project was due to begin Monday, Feb. 26, with Farmington’s Jaynes Corporation serving as the general contractor.

College officials celebrated the milestone on Feb. 23 by gathering for a ceremonial groundbreaking at the site of the new center, which will be built at the southeast corner of the Health and Human Performance Center, just north of the Zia Conference Center on the west side of the campus.

San Juan College President Toni Hopper Pendergrass emphasized the value of the new facility, telling the crowd its importance cannot be overstated.

“We can’t thank everyone enough for their tremendous support,” she said, singling out U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez, D-Las Vegas, New Mexico, who helped secure a $1.1 million federal appropriation to cover half the project’s construction cost.

A.J. Pacheco, one of the congresswoman’s staff members, said Leger Fernandez considers the appropriation an investment in New Mexico’s future.

“The congresswoman is always so impressed with San Juan College, this was a no-brainer,” he said after the ceremony.

The other $1.1 million will come from a state appropriation, the president said.

Pendergrass also thanked the college’s students, who voted to have a fee assessed to themselves of $20 a semester to have access to health care on campus. San Juan College students will not have to have insurance to be able to use the facility, she said.

More: US Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez, San Juan College officials tout on-campus health center

Boomer Appleman, the college’s vice president for student services, explained that having an on-campus student health center has been a goal for college officials for a long time.

“There are a lot of folks among us who wondered when this day would come,” he said, adding that the center will serve as a visible reminder of “our caring campus and community.”

After the ceremony, Appleman said the college has projected that 10% to 15% of San Juan College students will use the facility when it opens, which is expected to happen in the fall of 2025. Those students are projected to use the facility between one and five times each, he said.

Roughly speaking, he said, that equates to 600 to 700 students a year and 1,800 visits.

Appleman said he did not know how many students have been served at the temporary health center in the Cultural Center since it opened in September, but he noted that facility is located in a low-visibility location in a low-traffic part of the campus.

Once the new facility opens in the popular Health and Human Performance Center ― which is home to the school’s medical and dental programs, along with a climbing wall, workout facilities and basketball courts ― college officials anticipate the number of student visits will increase significantly, he said.

“It’s been a slow open, but that’s purposeful so we can assess what we need,” Appleman said.

The health center’s operational costs are being partially offset by a $60,000 annual appropriation from the state, Executive Vice President Ed DesPlas said. When that figure is combined with the funds raised from the additional assessment that students approved, that will amount to more than half the operational costs for the project, he said.

“As has been said, it takes a village,” DesPlas said.

Chris Harrelson, the senior director of the college’s physical plant, said college officials considered many locations for the planned center, but they settled on the site at the Health and Human Performance Center for its ease of access and logistic efficiencies.

The construction work will lead to some inconveniences for those who use the Health and Human Performance Center and conference center on a regular basis, he said. Much of the area will be fenced off, as will part of the parking lot on the east side of the two structures. The door to the conference center will be closed during the work, meaning people who wish to use that facility will need to access it through the HHPC.

Mike Easterling can be reached at 505-564-4610 or measterling@daily-times.com. Support local journalism with a digital subscription: http://bit.ly/2I6TU0e.

This article originally appeared on Farmington Daily Times: College's student health center projected to open in fall of 2025