Community College looking for St. Martinville acreage

Plans for South Louisiana Community College’s St. Martinville facility are a lot bigger than the footprint of either the old Louisiana Technical College Evangeline Campus or the nearby site of the old St. Martinville High football field on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.

SLCC Chancellor Dr. Natalie Harder told a relative handful of citizens at a town hall-style meeting  that they are looking for a minimum of nine acres for the new campus.

The catch is there is no money to buy the land. SLCC is asking for a donation or a direct swap for the existing property.

The Legislature has appropriated $8 million for the construction of a new school, and the St. Martin School Board agreed to transfer the former football field to SLCC under the condition that facilities to replace the Evangeline Campus be constructed there at a cost of no less than $6,800,000.

But Harder said the existing properties are not suitable because there is not enough room for the campus to grow and the residential nature of the surrounding neighborhood is not conducive to some of the programs the campus would offer. Access is also a problem, she said.

In addition to vocational and technical courses, the campus would offer general education classes so that students could stay at home and work toward a college degree without the commute to Lafayette or Baton Rouge.

One model of that plan already in use in Lafayette is the Early College Academy Program, which takes students beginning at 9th grade and sees them through a two-year associate’s degree at no cost to the student.

To justify enough participation for such courses, numerous classrooms can be joined via video technology that lets the teacher see and hear the students and of course vice versa.

Officials present at the town hall were state Rep. Terry Landry and Beth Guidry, executive director of the St. Martin Economic Development Authority.

The property is the block several hundred feet north of the current campus, bounded by MLK Jr. Drive, Berard, Honore and Theatre Streets. Years ago the property was the location of the St. Martinville High football field and athletic field house. Presently the northwest portion of the block is occupied by SMILE’s Early Head Start Child Development Center.

The current campus was built in 1963-64 as a branch of the T.H. Harris Vocational Technical School and soon renamed the Evangeline Area Tri-Parish Vocational-Technical School. It was redesignated the Louisiana Technical College Evangeline Campus and then the Evangeline Campus of Acadiana Technical College (ATC).

On July 1, 2012, SLCC merged with ATC to form one of Louisiana’s largest comprehensive community colleges with campuses in Abbeville, Crowley, Franklin, Lafayette, New Iberia, Opelousas, St. Martinville, and Ville Platte. 

SLCC was established in 1997 as a public, two-year institution with campuses in Lafayette and New Iberia. It originally belonged to the University of Louisiana System and in 1999 joined the Louisiana Community and Technical College System.