The request from Valencia College’s Lake Nona Campus to the Florida legislature to receive an estimated $43 million in funding for a new building has a “50-50” shot of getting approved this year, according to Florida House Rep. Rene Plasencia.
“There is obviously a need [for a new building] as we’re such a high-growth area,” said Rep. Plasencia, who represents the Lake Nona Campus and helps advocate for its interests in the capital. “[House] leadership has come and toured Lake Nona; I brought them in last summer so they could see the growth out there.”
The funding would come from the Public Education Capital Outlay (PECO) fund – a lump sum that is used to fund new college and state university buildings. According to Rep. Plasencia, a “PECO list” is organized by need and time waiting – with the schools at the top receiving funding first.
“We only funded two projects with PECO dollars last year,” Rep. Plasencia said. “It’s not because we didn’t have the money, it’s because our leadership decided not to do it.”
Every year that the campus doesn’t get funded, the cost of construction will go up. However, once the state government commits to funding the new building, it will have to keep with it until the project is complete. It’s just a matter of moving up the PECO list, and, according to the campus’ executive dean Dr. Mike Bosley, the sooner the better.
“We’ve asked for planning dollars this year,” Dr. Bosley said, “and it will be funded over the next three years.”
According to Dr. Bosley, the campus began in Lake Nona High School in the 2010-2011 school year, where it served around 900 students. The single-building, 18-classroom campus now sits on a 23-acre property and was designed for 3,500 students.
It’s enrollment in 2018-2019 nearly doubled that figure.
Dr. Bosley said that the campus has been “a little packed” lately, but the administration has compensated by “being really good stewards of our space,” offering more times for classes – early in the morning, into the evening, and on Saturdays – and some online and mixed-mode classes, the latter of which mixes online and in-person education.
“We described the [new] building as very similar to the one we have – 85,000 square feet,” Dr. Bosley said. “It’ll support growth and jobs – we’re talking about expanding the biotechnology program we have here and bringing in other technology programs.”
The campus offers an A.S. in biotechnology laboratory sciences and partners with the University of Florida College of Pharmacy, the University of Central Florida College of Medicine, the Veteran’s Administration Hospital, and Nemours Children’s Hospital.
The campus’ master plan is to build two more buildings to keep up with the rise in enrolled students and the growth of the Lake Nona community, but Dr. Bosley affirmed that the main focus is getting the new building approved first. If the campus’ plan is approved, the construction of the building would begin next year.
The new building would be another step in the streak of growth by Valencia College over the past several years. The college opened its Poinciana Campus in 2017 to better serve dual-enrollment students in Osceola County. At the beginning of this school year, a shared downtown campus with UCF opened near Parramore. College-wide enrollment has grown from nearly 39,000 students across four campuses in the fall of 2009 to more than 77,000 across seven in the fall of 2019.
