COLLEGE BUYING 2ND CAMPUS AUGUST 2006 OPENING TARGET.

Byline: Carol Rock Staff Writer

Next year, Canyon Country and Saugus college students will find themselves spending less time in traffic and more time in the classroom.

August 2006 is the target opening date for the Canyon Country Education Center, a 70-acre eastside facility for College of the Canyons nestled into a hillside on Sierra Highway between Sand Canyon Road and Vasquez Canyon Road.

The new campus, which is expected to accommodate 4,700 students on opening day, is completely within the boundaries of the city of Santa Clarita. Currently 32 percent of the college district's students live in Canyon Country and Saugus.

Classrooms will be housed in surplus modular buildings purchased from Vandenberg Air Force Base last year, college officials said. A 50,000- square-foot classroom building is expected to rise on the site in 2007 if bond financing is available.

With 40 acres usable for classrooms and teaching facilities, the campus will offer instruction, food service, health and counseling services to assist students. Athletics and performing-arts programming will be based at the college's Valencia campus.

As the site is developed, planners expect to preserve many of the natural features that currently exist, including stepped elevations for seven or eight multistory buildings, parking for at least 10,000 students and a large amount of green space. Classrooms will be set back a distance from the road, something college spokeswoman Sue Bozman promised would be easy on the eye.

``We've seen the virtual view from the planners, and hardly anything will be seen from Sierra Highway,'' she said. ``It will be a pretty campus.''

Santa Clarita City Councilman Bob Kellar, a Realtor in Santa Clarita for 14 years, said it was a quirk of circumstance that led him to the bundle of properties destined to become the eastside campus.

``I got to talking with some of the property owners in the area, and they were willing to work with the college,'' he said. ``We were extremely lucky to find this many pieces all together.''

Kellar represented College of the Canyons in all the transactions, as well as acting for the property owner in some cases.

As Jim Schrage, the college's dean of facilities and overseer of the project walked through an open valley toward the west border of the property, he passed a mobile structure dumped mysteriously during the night. He recalled rides through the area that he and members of the selection committee have taken over recent months.

``We've been on a lot of bumpy roads with a lot of people,'' he said. ``But we're happy with the result.''

The campus faces a series of storage yards and automobile services across Sierra Highway. Schrage said many of the storage yards are there because those parcels include flood plain, on which no one can build.

On the south end of the property is the Warmuth honey house, a familiar landmark for Sierra Highway travelers for more than 50 years. Opened by J. Willis Dyer in 1954 and sold to Joe and Marge Warmuth in the 1960s, the honey house closed in 1994, immediately after the Northridge Earthquake.

``The old honey house is staying,'' Schrage said, refuting rumors that it was going to be demolished. ``There's no reason or plan to tear it down. It will make a nice facilities-yard building.''

The Canyon Country Educational Center comprises six properties: 3.53 acres purchased in February from Patrick and Erica Betz for $930,000; three lots totaling 15.3 acres bought from William and Lenore Lambert in March for $1.18 million; 3.39 acres bought from Julia Gamba and Zoraida Pena in April for $785,000; 2.16 acres, including the honey house, purchased in April from Margaret Warmuth for $749,000; and three lots totaling 29.05 acres purchased in August from the Rice Family Trust for $6.25 million.

Schrage and other college planners are waiting for the final piece of the puzzle, a 16.3-acre parcel with a hilltop house, listed at $4 million. He expects an agreement soon, allowing plans for grading and site preparation to kick into high gear.

Canyon High School Principal Bob Messina is among those on the site- selection committee.

``It was hard to envision, looking at a nothing piece of land and trying to see the advantages and disadvantages,'' said Messina, who added that a large number of Canyon High students attend classes at the college.

``It was a big learning curve for all of us. This campus will get a lot of use. It took a lot of wheeling and dealing, but it will be worth it. Having this on the east side of town is a tremendous resource.''

Carol Rock, [phone]

carol.rock(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color -- ran in SAC edition only) College of the Canyons spokeswoman Sue Bozman and Jim Schrage, dean of facilities, stand on part of the new eastside campus, tentatively set to open in August 2006.

(2 -- ran in SAC edition only) Jim Schrage, College of the Canyons facilities director, shows campus spokeswoman Sue Bozman part of the site for a new eastside campus, expected to accommodate 4,700 students on opening day in 2006.

Hans Gutknecht/Staff Photographer