Burlington County college details Mount Laurel move

As people flocked to what was Burlington County College's satellite campus in Mount Laurel over the years, one brick building after another popped up, ringed by broad parking lots.

The growing community college location was intended to respond to students' needs: Drive in, maybe from a job or caring for a child, park outside a building, walk in for class, then leave quickly afterward.

And the school's main campus, in Pemberton Township, became less and less of a draw - it has enrolled fewer students than Mount Laurel for a decade.

This summer, the school, newly renamed Rowan College at Burlington County as part of a partnership with Rowan University, announced plans to close its Pemberton campus and expand its Mount Laurel site.

Thursday evening, the school unveiled the details of its transition plan, the bulk of which will unfold during the 2016-17 academic year. Trustees unanimously approved the plan.

Much of the new development is designed to create the feel of a flagship campus, complete with a grassy quadrangle and 75,000-square-foot Student Success Center that will include dining facilities, bookstore, and student services.

"There's no real place for the students to kind of hang out and be there," said Mark Coan, the partner at Somerset County-based USA Architects who is heading the project.

"It's the kind of place where it's hopefully going to encourage the students to come early and stay late and just be on campus as Rowan College at Burlington County tries to redefine itself as offering really that true collegiate or university experience."

The 9,500-student college renamed itself as part of a partnership with Rowan University that will guarantee transfer admission to students who meet basic academic requirements.

With the name change and the Pemberton closure, the community college is taking advantage of an opportunity to rebrand itself and create a new environment, said president Paul Drayton.

"This building will be a state-of-the-art student center that, if you closed your eyes, you would not know whether you were on a two-year or four-year campus. It's going to be that different," Drayton said.

"In part, and I think this is really important to talk about, this is going to be a hybrid campus. You're going to have Rowan College at Burlington County students pursuing their associate's degrees, walking past Rowan University students pursuing their four-year degree."

Creating the feel of a centralized campus in Mount Laurel helps the school meet the needs of a target population, said Jake Farbman, spokesman for the New Jersey Council of County Colleges: students who plan to transfer to a bachelor's degree program after community college.

That population has grown over the years thanks to state programs such as NJ STARS, which provides funding for top students who start at community colleges, Farbman said. With Rowan College at Burlington County partnering with Rowan University to further blur the lines, he said, the school needs to adapt.

"There is that group of students who don't want to go to a community college because they want 'the college experience,' " he said.

"What if we were able to create that experience on our campus, where students had that feel where they were at college, there were these walkways, these seating areas, a student area, a place where you can study, a computer lab?"

Drayton said renovations to the Pemberton facilities would have cost $55 million, about the same as the cost of relocating to the expanded Mount Laurel site. He expects state funding to cover about half the cost of the project.

A committee of college and county officials, including the mayor of Pemberton Township, is to meet soon to determine the facilities' future, Drayton said.

The school will save from $3 million to $4 million in annual operating costs by consolidating, he has said.

In Mount Laurel, the existing redbrick buildings that make up the campus will be renovated, with new spaces carved out within them.

Overall, between the two campuses, the community college will lose space, shrinking from 662,000 square feet in use across the Pemberton and Mount Laurel campuses to 402,000 square feet in Mount Laurel alone.

Consolidating in Mount Laurel, the college will have 22 fewer classrooms, and also reduce its facilities by three lecture halls, nine computer labs, and a science lab. It will add a health sciences lab.

But that makes sense, the school said, because it has too much space. The Mount Laurel spaces are used at about 46 percent efficiency, the school said, and the Pemberton campus is at 29 percent efficiency.

Ideally, consultants told the school, spaces should be in use 60 percent to 80 percent of the time.

So the Pemberton buildings will be shuttered. All other locations, including Mount Holly, Willingboro, and Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, will continue to operate.

The arts program in Pemberton will move to Mount Holly, administrative offices will move to the Enterprise Center in Mount Laurel, and a library "concierge" transition service will move to the former library in the Technology and Engineering Center, also in Mount Laurel.

All of that is to take place by fall 2016. Then, over the 2016-17 school year, classes will be moved over to Mount Laurel. Remaining staff will follow.

Amid the moves will be a reorganization that centralizes academic disciplines, beginning with creating a liberal arts "college" in Laurel Hall.

A science, math, and technology "college" will be housed in the Technology and Engineering Center, a health sciences one in a dedicated home on Briggs Road.

"One of the major challenges that both faculty and staff have commented about since day one," Drayton said, "is that it makes it really, really difficult to do our jobs when everyone is located in different spaces on two different campuses."

As the Mount Laurel campus grows, the plan calls for new parking lots - 680 new spaces - and new landscaping, walkways, and the completion of a College Drive loop ringing the area.

And just off Route 38 will rise the new building, which Drayton hopes becomes a landmark - a campus focal point and branding opportunity.

"It certainly will be not only visible from a location like this," he said while in Laurel Hall on campus, "but also from Route 38, thousands of people passing by."

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