JJC Breaks Ground for New Building
Freezing temperatures necessitated a move indoors and a symbolic groundbreaking.
Joliet Junior College officials, politicians and citizens turned out on a cold Tuesday afternoon for the groundbreaking of the new City Center facility. Because of the cold temperatures the event was moved indoors and officials dug mini shovels into a cake designed by culinary arts students to mimic an outdoor groundbreaking. The culinary arts program will be housed in the new building when it is complete. Here is the breakdown of the new building by the numbers:
6: Number of stories in the new building.
2: Number of stories in the glass-enclosed lobby of the new building
58: Number of millions of dollars it will cost to build the new building.
3: Number of programs that will be housed in the new building - the department of adult education and literacy, workforce development and culinary arts.
1980: The year Joliet Junior College purchased the existing Renaissance Center and the adjoining hotel.
1925: Year the building was debuted as the new clubhouse for the Joliet Chamber of Commerce.
1969: Year the hotel building was added.
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Dennis
7:38 am on Thursday, January 24, 2013
I hope that these kids with aspirations of becoming chefs will achieve their goal. But, more than likely they will end up at Mickey D's. Taxpayers once again get duped by the system, not realizing most of their money is going for a cause NOT benefiting the majority.
pepper
11:40 am on Thursday, January 24, 2013
This is a perfect example of the tax payers waste of money again! After all this is a 'community college' and this facility should have been built OUTSIDE the city of Joliet limits for millions less and with much better parking accommodations!
fonzie
10:55 am on Thursday, January 24, 2013
Too cold for the 'gold shovel' crowd, but not the real men who do the construction.
2-story glass lobby seems like unproductive use of space.
FrankfortWorkingMom
8:22 pm on Thursday, January 24, 2013
The JJC Board conducted NO study before deciding to add this new culinary building. Residents asked them if they could show that it would benefit students or the community and they said "no." Residents asked them why they thought they could take $40+ Million tax dollars for a project without any clear benefits and the response from the Board was "We can do anything we want, as long as it's not illegal." Elections have consequences folks. suck it up and pay for it.
Brad Baber
10:29 am on Thursday, February 14, 2013
In the 2008 general election when the JJC capital plan referendum was passed, this city center culinary building was planned as a $24M public/private partnership. The board then voted to increase it to $31M. Then they voted to increase it to $43M and not longer being a partnership, but all tax payer money. Then they increased it to $51.8M, and now $58M. Even at $58M they have not included all of the costs, nor have they told the public the annual operating and maintenance costs. The price tag will likely rise before it's done. There wasn't any job study, economic study, or culinary graduate success tracking done to justify this massive expansion, yet this board dominated by 5 tax and spenders have pushed forward without any reasonable justification. $24M for this project was supposed to come from the state, but the state is broke. Over a year ago the board voted to move forward with the project without even having the money from the state. I ran for the board in 2011, being very vocal about this out of control spending and taxing (17% levy increase passed last year, and 5.5% this year). Wake up people, the incuments are the ones raising your property tax year after year.