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Thursday, May 17, 2012
Regional Focus: January 2008
It’s High Time
Can college classrooms keep up with Placer’s population?
Story by Don Lipper and Elizabeth Sagehorn
College students could start flocking to Placer, and not just for those rockin‘ trips to Tahoe. The south county is already home to Sierra College and William Jessup University, but if several developments go through as planned, South Placer could add a couple more campuses and become a regional contender for the college crowd.
Another large and small university in Placer would generate more than 6,700 jobs and $338 million in direct annual economic output in the county, according to the Sacramento Regional Research Institute. With a local work force that’s highly educated, the rippling benefits have the potential to create close to 9,400 jobs and more than $1 billion in annual economic output. That doesn’t include the additional $49 million in annual tax revenue.
One school seeking to strike California gold is Drexel University. The 116-year-old Philadelphia-based college is actively considering Placer as a location for a campus in the West. A delegation of 40 Drexel leaders have toured the county and examined a 1,100-acre site on the western border of Roseville, off Baseline Road.
Four years ago, that location was proposed as the site for a Christian Brothers-backed college. After that deal stalled, landowner Angelo Tsakopoulos met with Drexel University President Constantine Papadakis to suggest his university move to Placer.
The 21,000-student Drexel — the state’s second-largest private university after the University of Pennsylvania — had been growing at the rate of 1,000 students a year for the past 11 years and was reaching its limits at its 90-acre Philadelphia campus.
“We have been thinking strategically about what will happen in the Northeast in terms of higher education in the next 10 to 20 years. The information is very bleak. The Northeast will have a vacuum in the number of 18-year-olds who will go to college, while Florida, Texas and California will have a considerable increase over the same period of time,” Papadakis says.
Drexel has considered other California markets for its expansion. “In Los Angeles, you have a great private university in USC. In the Bay Area, you have another great one in Stanford. In Sacramento, there is nothing. I thought it would be a great opportunity,” Papadakis says.
The South Placer site would include developing a 536-acre community to help finance the adjacent 600-acre campus. The land for the university would be donated by the Tsakopoulos family and other landowners. The current proposal calls for the community to go up first,
establishing the infrastructure — such as sewers and roads — needed for the campus. Before the university breaks ground, the first buildings would be self-financed.
“Angelo thought that [by selling the prepared home sites to builders] he should be able to net $100 million to $150 million depending on the market. The market in Sacramento isn’t good right now, but three years from now it is going be back again,” Papadakis says.
Drexel plans to begin a limited four-year program in rented facilities this September. Nearby high schools and colleges are already looking for ways to integrate with Drexel. To help prime the pump locally, Drexel announced it would offer any area high school graduate a $10,000 a year academic scholarship toward tuition.
According to Drexel, the university’s annual economic impact on Pennsylvania is $1.6 billion with 21,000 students. Papadakis suggests the California campus with 5,000 students would bring in more than $400 million annually to the local economy.
While Drexel performs a market survey to decide what its first offerings will be, the staff is already making plans for the expanded footprint of the 600-acre campus. Drexel is considering building a business park to attract companies interested in partnering with the university in research and development.
Drexel isn’t the only college with expansion plans headed for the south county. Placer Ranch is a proposed 2,200-acre development centered on a university campus and business district, including commercial, retail and residential zoning. Upon approval of the specific plan, developer Eli Broad plans to donate 290 acres to Sacramento State to build a campus.
The property is currently in an unincorporated area north of Roseville and west of Rocklin. In October, developers announced they would seek annexation to the city of Roseville; they had been working with the county on the project since 2003.
“If everything goes smoothly and absolutely perfectly, we’re looking at the campus opening up in the 2011 or 2012 range,” says Holly Tiche, president of Placer Ranch.
With two colleges expanding to South Placer and two already established there, competition could be heating up to lure students. Or, Placer classrooms could be catching up with its population boom. In 2007, Placer County had nearly 324,500 residents, according to estimates by the state Department of Finance, up 78 percent since 2000. Most of that growth occurred in Roseville, Rocklin and Lincoln in the south county.
Bryce Jessup, president of William Jessup University says the new colleges “can do nothing but help us.
“Much like fast-food companies will build three different chains on three corners of an intersection, our purposes are different and we will be offering things they don’t offer,” he says. “Having all of us here will bring more attention to Placer County.”
William Jessup landed in Rocklin after it outgrew its 20-year location in San Jose. When the Christian leadership college opened in 2004, it became the first private, four-year university in the Sacramento area. The 125-acre college offers degrees in business administration, Christian education and liberal studies, among others.
About 600 students are enrolled at William Jessup, though the university has the space to hold as many as 5,000. The college’s foundation is gearing up for a capital campaign to upgrade its athletic facilities, including adding a stadium in 2009. It’s also hoping to build more dorms by next January to add 100 more residential students to the 170 who already call Jessup home.
With the South Placer land grab in the backdrop and looming expansions from other colleges, long-standing Sierra College isn’t sitting still either. As the oldest college in Placer, Sierra is a two-year public school in Rocklin that’s bracing for a boom in local college enrollment.
“We’re looking to expand in western Placer over the next 10 to 15 years. We’re looking at the same demographics everyone else is. There will be tremendous growth in the population in that area,” says Leo Chavez, president of Sierra College. “We’re also seeing an increase in college attendance and the need for training and retraining. Our enrollment might double to 21,000 students over the next 15 to 20 years or so.”
Sierra is concerned about running out of land in South Placer with so many developments in the pipeline, Chavez says. “Over the next few months we need to find a site and either obtain an option or obtain the site itself.”
Economics and demographics aside, the south county has another allure for out-of-towners. “I’ve been told that there are something like 60 golf courses within driving distance. Clearly this is the right place to do business,” Papadakis says.
