FRESNO, CA (KMJ) – The West Fresno Center opened its doors for students on Monday, August 7, 2023.
The beautiful new center located at Church and Walnut avenues includes two state-of-the-art buildings, occupying 110,000 square feet—the Academic Building and the Advanced Transportation Center.
Land was acquired in June 2018, through donation and purchases, SIM-PBK was selected as the project architect. The Board of Trustees approved a Project Labor Agreement in February 2020 to encourage the use of local labor and SCCCD graduates.
The West Fresno Center campus sits on 39 acres and will be an open campus with a park-like setting including bicycle and pedestrian paths to facilitate engagement with the outdoors and green space as well as biking and walking to work, school, and home.
This park setting will also include an urban forest and bio-retention system to promote ground water recharge. A central feature of the campus will be the central plaza and water feature.
The water feature will include an integrated art piece. The district partnered with the Fresno Arts Council to use qualified artists with a connection to Fresno to create artwork to celebrate the cultural diversity and unique sense of place of West Fresno. Selected artist, Teresa Flores, engaged the local community at neighborhood events to gather stories, history and ideas about West Fresno to help inform the painted tile vignettes featured in the water feature artwork.
As of July 2023, staff is starting to move into the Academic Building.
The Vocational buildings and campus site work are scheduled to be complete later this summer. Installation of the equipment in the vocational buildings will continue through the fall.
48 classes are being offered. Link to them here.
The West Fresno Center will bring much needed higher educational opportunities to West Fresno.
Listen to the report by KMJ’s Jim Miller.
