Stokes County commissioners Monday will consider buying 46 acres to serve as a community-college campus.
The land, which will cost about $315,000, is on Dodgetown Road, near the intersection of N.C. Highways 8 and 89, in the Meadows community.
"There are no guarantees, but if I had to make a call one way or another, based on how things were mentioned in our last meeting, I would say that it will probably pass," said Jimmy Walker, the board's chairman.
County Manager Brian Steen said that the county is fronting the money in anticipation of a bank loan to be closed on early next year.
"It's a nice thing for this county because we haven't had our own dedicated community-college facility,'' Steen said. "We're one of few counties left in North Carolina that doesn't have its own campus.''
The site will serve as the campus for a community college affiliated with Forsyth Technical Community College and the Stokes County Early College program, which gives students a chance to earn a high-school diploma and an associate's degree in five years.
Students in Early College currently take classes at Forsyth Tech's northwest campus just inside the Forsyth County line. Officials hope that the students can start the 2010 school year in an eight-classroom pod on the Dodgetown Road site. That pod also would serve as the office for Forsyth Tech's Stokes County staff.
A permanent building for the Early College and the community college is still a few years away, Walker said.
"Speaking as one person on a board of five, I'd like to see it happen very quickly, but, in reality, we have to look at how we would finance this and work it in with the debt we already have. But we're probably looking at a few years," he said.
Once built, the Stokes campus will serve a need for county residents, said Gary Green, the president of Forsyth Tech. This semester, Forsyth Tech had 828 degree-seeking students from Stokes County, up from 613 in fall of 2006.
Current students may be taking classes in Winston-Salem or in classrooms scattered throughout Stokes County.
"It's really a positive step forward that the county is making," Green said. "We've had a presence in Danbury for the last five or six years, but this is a major step forward in creating a freestanding college center in Stokes County."
The building would mean that Forsyth Tech students won't have to take their classes in fire departments or in the evening at South Stokes High School and the government center in Danbury. The college's Stokes County staff has long had to scramble to find places to serve as classrooms, said Ann Watts, the director of operations for Forsyth Tech in Stokes County.
"It gives us an identity in the community that Forsyth Tech has a campus, and that message will, I think, provide ideas to students about going to college," Watts said.
lodonnell@wsjournal.com
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