THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 7, 1995 TAG: 9501070228
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ALEX MARSHALL AND PHILIP S. WALZER, STAFF WRITERS
LENGTH: Medium: 81 lines
Norfolk Mayor Paul Fraim and City Manager James B. Oliver met privately with Gov. George F. Allen Jr. for nearly an hour Thursday in Richmond to argue for continued funding for a new campus downtown for Tidewater Community College.
If the state kills the project, Norfolk officials say, it risks future jobs for young people as well as the good word of the commonwealth.
Allen has proposed cutting all funding for the project, even though the General Assembly last year approved it, and the city has already begun construction.
Fraim, who on Friday confirmed the private meeting, said he believed the governor might be reconsidering his decision to kill the project, based on Allen's comments and questions in the governor's office in Richmond.
``I think the decision was a very tough one for him in the beginning,'' Fraim said. ``With the new information, it's even more difficult. I'm convinced he is trying to decide this on the merits.''
Allen could not be reached for comment Friday. His staff said there was no record of the private meeting.
So far, the city estimates it has spent $4.6 million on the project, including $3.3 million for construction of the $6.6 million campus along Granby Street. The city has torn down two storefronts and begun converting the seven-story former home of the Smith & Welton department store into classrooms, offices and a library.
Private citizens and groups have also been involved. The owner of the former Smith & Welton store donated the building, valued at $300,000. Private groups have already raised $1 million for the project.
By backing out now, city officials say, the state risks losing the trust of its citizens and officials. When Allen made his announcement cutting the project, the city was within a week of selling bonds to investors to fund it, Fraim said.
By cutting the project, the state saves $1.3 million over the next 20 years to pay off the bonds.
The city's fears go beyond losing money already spent on TCC. The new downtown campus is a key part of Norfolk's downtown revitalization program.
Among its many tasks, the new campus is meant to provide employment training to residents in the surrounding housing projects and low-income neighborhoods around downtown.
It would include a specific course in retail sales, designed to help low-income residents find jobs at the new MacArthur Center shopping mall.
This strategy was a factor in helping the city win $33 million in federal loans for the development of the $270 million MacArthur Center, and Norfolk's recent federal designation as an enterprise community.
A major part of the city's argument is that a community college plays a different role than other colleges or universities.
Gordon K. Davies, director of the State Council of Higher Education, said the council is backing the campus, based on a study commissioned by the Norfolk City Council. The study showed ``a substantial portion of inner-city residents of Norfolk need the type of occupational and technical skills that are typically taught by community colleges.''
TCC officials say that, based on studies in other cities, 10,000 Norfolk residents should be enrolled in colleges and universities. But only one-third that number attended colleges in 1993.
They point to the growth of TCC's Norfolk center in an office building on Monticello Avenue as proof of the draw of a larger campus on Granby Street. Enrollment at the center has nearly doubled to 840 in the past two years.
Members of the Allen administration have argued that the campus is unnecessary in a city with two state-supported universities and a region with TCC campuses already in Chesapeake, Portsmouth and Virginia Beach.
But Davies said, ``The universities do not offer either the same curricula or the access to programs for people who have not taken full advantage of a high school diploma or are out in the workplace for a while.'' And, he said, ``many of the people who enroll in community colleges are from financial circumstances that make commuting to Virginia Beach, Portsmouth or Chesapeake very difficult.'' ILLUSTRATION: Norfolk Mayor Paul Fraim, left, and City Manager James B.
Oliver, right, met with the governor on Thursday.
KEYWORDS: BUDGET CUTS TIDEWATER COMMUNITY COLLEGE by CNB