Roughly a quarter of students who attend Durham Technical Community College live in Orange County, and now they'll be able to attend classes closer to home.
HILLSBOROUGH -- Roughly a quarter of students who attend Durham Technical Community College live in Orange County, and now they'll be able to attend classes closer to home. Durham Tech has expanded its campus to include a 40,000-square-foot building just outside Hillsborough in Orange County.
"We have about 25 percent of our student population from Durham Tech living in Orange County," said Dina Logan, who works as the college's director of Orange County Centers. "So we've heard from a lot of people that they're very excited about the opportunity to stay a little closer to home and meet their educational and training needs. They're very excited about staying a little closer to home.
"We may also have people coming from Durham who are a little bit closer to this site than our main campus," she continued. "So we may see certain shifts from Durham actually locating here as well."
The building is open for continuing education classes during the summer, and in the fall students can have their pick of a wide range of classes. Administrators said the new building allows them to centralize classes they've offered for years all across the county.
"We've been spread out in about 40 different locations -- everything from churches to high schools to skills development center which is on Franklin Street," Logan explained. "So we've been serving the needs of the community for many, many years, but having this facility centrally located will allow us to combine the courses in a place that's much more accessible to all the regions of the county, not just Chapel Hill, or not just Hillsborough."
She said some of the college's classroom sites across the county will close.
"The majority of our classes have been located in the Orange County Skills Development Center on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, and at Cedar Ridge High School, and at Chapel Hill High School," Logan explained, "and also some smaller pockets in churches and a couple of other school locations.
"But basically we'll stop offering classes at Cedar Ridge since it's very close to this location already, and we're likely going to stop offering at Chapel Hill High as well," she continued. "We are going to have to continue to use the Orange County Skills Development Center, and offer day and evening classes there, as well as [at the new building], because we have too many [classes] to fit into this building right now."
She said the skills development center "is on public transportation routes, so it's very, very good access for those people who cannot drive and live in the southern part of the county and Chapel Hill."
Administrators said the building serves another community need -- energy conservation.
Durham Tech has expanded its campus to include a 40,000-square-foot building just outside Hillsborough in Orange County.
"There's a rainwater collection system that collects all the rainwater off the roof," explained Dick McKown, facilities supervisor at Durham Tech. "And collects it into a 10,000 gallon underground storage tank. That is then pumped into a storage facility inside the building where it is chemically treated and dye placed in the water so that you know this is rainwater, and it goes to flush toilets. That's all it's used for."
He said the rainwater collection system is "a really good feature now that we have drought conditions."
"Based on the roof square footage, the tank should be filled up if we have a rain just slightly less than one inch," McKown said. "So every time we get a three quarter-inch rain, it fills the tank."
The building also boasts solar panels to heat water, and shelves above windows to help regulate room temperature.
"There are light shelves installed on some of the windows on the east and south portions of the building that will direct the sun's rays into the rooms for the purpose of lighting the room," McKown said. "The room has a number of sensors that will regulate the light when light levels from the outside gets high enough it shuts off the interior lights, so it's kind of a nice feature."
The building also uses waterless urinals, and interior lights that turn off if no one's inside a room.
"All the rooms are fitted with an automatic shutoff for the lighting system," McKown said. "If there's no activity in the room they will automatically shut off."
Administrators said the new building is just the beginning of the college's expansion in Orange County; they plan to eventually add four more buildings on the 20-acre site.
"We look forward to having a larger library, potentially a health technology building, a computer imaging building, any number of things, whatever we find we need to meet the demands of the community," Logan said.
Administrators have scheduled an open house and grand opening at the site on Friday, May 2, from 3:30 p.m. until 6 p.m.
"It's basically a time for the community to come out and see the building," Logan said. "We've had a lot of excitement expressed, and a lot of people want to get in and see what the building looks like."