Dear Editor,

In 2016, the college’s District Board made several strategic decisions to continue to live out and serve the college’s mission to provide access to quality education for its residents. One of those decisions was to ground lease the Downtown Education Center (DTEC) to allow for a recurring revenue stream over the life of the lease, which would be applied to the college’s general expenditures. In times of decreasing financial support, this source of revenue will provide a flexible, consistent stream of income to bolster the college’s ability to serve out its mission well into future generations.

The college did its due diligence in selecting a developer for the ground lease project from among several proposals. Hovde/Drury Southwest’s proposal for an office building and hotel was accepted. The office building will go up on the current parking lot, and Drury will renovate the current building and transform it into a limited-service hotel. The Madison Central High School arch will be preserved and incorporated into the hotel design.

A team of administrators, faculty, staff, and students has been meeting since May 2017 to prepare for and undertake the transition process of moving programs, students, faculty and staff and equipment to new locations. The college will take a phased approach to this work, and for the 2017/2018 school year, all programming at DTEC will remain the same. This means students can expect that classes, programs, and services to be in place this academic year at the Downtown location.

The 2018/2019 academic year will be devoted to transitioning programming, in a phased approach, to other locations as space becomes available.

A very important goal of the Transition Team is to ensure DTEC students are able to continue their educational pursuits at the college. The Transition Team will work especially close with faculty, advisors, and other student services staff to ensure that each student at DTEC has a plan in place to complete their educational and training goals at the college as the move progresses. Please watch for future letters to the editor as we continue in this process. In particular, the transition team will be surveying DTEC students later this fall to ensure it has the best information on what students may need to make this move and how the college can best assist them.

Lastly, please visit a commemorative wall installed on the first floor of the Carroll Street hallway which honors the history of the building. You can share your favorite DTEC memory by emailing [email protected].

Thank you,

Tina Ahedo, Janice Mettauer, Antonio Molina Riva and Tina Marshalak, Student Senate President

On behalf of the DTEC Transition Planning Team

Student Mari LaFore also contributed to this letter.