Palamanui campus on track, officials say

The new Hawaii Community College —Palamanui is on course to be completed in May, according to the project’s superintendent.

Construction crews for general contractor F&H Construction have been finishing roofs, installing insulation and painting at the 24,000-square-foot, $25 million center. Next they will be finishing interior walls and installing doors and frames, said superintendent Rick Case. Work on the site mauka of Kona International Airport began in November.

The project has proceeded smoothly except for a lack of water, which is now being trucked in so crews can flush sprinklers, Case told a group of community college officials touring the site Wednesday. A wetland which is part of a living wastewater treatment facility also had to be redesigned around a cultural site, Case said.

Walls and roofs are up, interior frames are in place and electrical and plumbing have been installed. The facility will feature classrooms, science laboratories, learning and testing centers, administrative offices, a kitchen and dining area with the capacity to serve 700 students.

Trelises over walkways and an outdoor eating area will hold solar paneling, and the buildings are designed to catch the tradewinds and funnel the cooling effect into classrooms. The center is being built to green standards suitable for a LED Platinum rating, said Ken Fletcher, director of the University of Hawaii Center, West Hawaii, in Kealakekua.

The laboratory will allow Palamanui to offer biological science courses on a level that hasn’t been possible with the limited lab at Kealakekua, said Noreen Yamane, Hawaii Community College chancellor.

Once the center is ready for move-in, faculty, staff and programs will move down from Kealakekua in a single push, leaving the current leased facilities behind entirely, community college officials say. The goal is to be operational in time for classes in the fall of 2015, Fletcher said.

“There’s been a sense of excitement for everyone who has been out here to see this place,” Fletcher said. “We expect growth.”

The UH system plans to ultimately build four phases capable of serving 1,500 full-time students, but there is not yet a timeline for the expansion. The college must significantly boost its current enrollment of 400 full-time students and show the demand is there, Fletcher said.

Once the new center becomes established and shows the community what it can deliver, the administration can begin identifying areas of need that could be served by an expansion, Yamane said.

“We’re going to see this as a gateway,” Yamane said. “This center can bring in programs from all of the nine campuses. It’s wide open.”

The lease for the Kealakekua center runs out in June. Community college administrators are renegotiating in the hope of continuing at the old facility on a month-to-month basis to allow time for the move, said Jim Yoshida, vice chancellor for administrative affairs.

“We wouldn’t want to commit to a year lease,” he said.

Email Bret Yager at byager@westhawaiitoday.com.