`YOU SEE OPEN SPACE, I SEE A COLLEGE' GROUND BROKEN FOR NEW CAMPUS CENTER CLASSES EXPECTED TO START NEXT YEAR.

Byline: Sue Doyle Staff Writer

CANYON COUNTRY - A groundbreaking ceremony Tuesday kicked off the start of a second campus for College of the Canyons where classes are scheduled to start next year.

The Canyon Country Education Center will stretch across a 70-acre site off Sierra Highway and is expected to first draw in about 3,000 students, mainly from eastern Santa Clarita, who will attend classes in modular buildings during construction of the new school. Construction is expected to begin in 2007.

The new digs eventually will accommodate about 10,000 students in eight multistory buildings when construction ends in 2015. Land for the site was bought with funds generated by Measure C, passed by voters in 2001, that generated $82.1 million.

At the outdoor inauguration ceremony, Superintendent Dianne Van Hook asked the audience to look around. Scuffy hilltops and dusty dirt roads surrounded the crowd of about 50 - some students, teachers, neighbors and faculty members.

``You see open space,'' she said. ``I see a college.''

The second campus has been about 15 years in the making, and its need grew as Santa Clarita's population flourished.

Van Hook said the 153-acre Valencia campus was built to hold 5,000 students when it first opened in 1969. Today, about 15,000 students attend classes there, and the campus is considered built out.

The college has offered classes in the past at locations closer to its Canyon Country residents, such as at the Jo Anne Darcy Library and at Golden Valley High School. But Van Hook said they were temporary solutions to the second campus.

The new site will come as a relief to students from that area and beyond who navigate Santa Clarita's heavily traveled streets to get to class on time.

Canyon Country residents Lloyd and Myrna Hoffman said their son, now a junior at Golden Valley High School, will attend college at the new campus after graduation. The couple was eager to hear about the new facility and took off work to attend Tuesday's ceremony.

Two of their daughters graduated from College of the Canyons, and Lloyd Hoffman said the girls had to leave home early to drive to school and find parking on campus.

But this new location will change everything for his son.

``Over here, he can walk,'' he said. ``We live five minutes down the road.''

Sue Doyle,[phone]

sue.doyle(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

3 photos, map

Photo:

(1 -- color) Lynne Mayer, assistant to Superintendent Dianne Van Hook, takes photos of the site for the new campus.

(2 -- color) College of the Canyons broke ground Tuesday on its new education center.

(3 -- color) The college passed out honey in honor of the former use of the Sierra Highway site on which a second campus will be built.

David Crane/Staff Photographer

Map:

Canyon Country Education Center