Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Southeast Center opens new Library, Student Commons facilities

Photos and story by James Hill

Portland Community College officially celebrated the completion of the Southeast Center Library and Student Commons Building with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Friday, April 11.

The festivities included tours of the buildings, remarks by local and state leaders and a ribbon-cutting between the two structures. Speakers included PCC President Jeremy Brown; Board Chair Denise Frisbee; Southeast/Extended Learning Campus President Jessica Howard; Rep. Alissa Keny-Guyer; Portland City Commissioner Amanda Fritz; and Walsh Construction Project Manager Jeff Patton. This project is part of the college¡¯s 2008 voter-approved $374 million capital construction bond, which has earmarked $48 million to upgrade the center.

¡°On behalf of PCC¡¯s Board of Directors, I thank all of you voters for giving a vote of confidence to PCC and passing the bond measure because what we see today is an example of the good work accomplished thanks to your ¡®green light¡¯ of PCC¡¯s request,¡± said Frisbee.

The ceremony signifies PCC¡¯s ongoing transformation of the Southeast Center into a comprehensive, full-service campus. The Student Commons Building is a new three-story, 66,000-square-foot building that houses an expanded bookstore, five science classrooms/labs, six general purpose classrooms, four career technical education/computer classrooms, a new answer center for better student service delivery and a new STEM center. The Library is a three-story, 40,000-square-foot facility that contains the Student Computing Center, Student Learning Center (including tutoring services), Volunteer Literacy Center, traditional library services, four classrooms and study areas.

¡°We are building a monument to community, a haven for learning, a point of pride for the neighborhood and a sign of great things to come for the Southeast Portland,¡± Brown said. ¡°We are already seeing the beginnings of this transformation. For example, this spring our enrollment at the Southeast Center is showing the healthiest of change of all of our major instructional locations. I expect that this will gather more and more momentum so that the Southeast Center will grow by leaps and bounds.¡±

For more information on the new buildings, checkout this Bond Program Factsheet, or view the photo gallery below.

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