MCCC West Campus celebrating 25 years
Community invited to event with evening fireworks
POTTSTOWN » The 25th anniversary of Montgomery County Community College's opening of its west campus in Pottstown will be celebrated today with a combination of sandwiches, history and fireworks.
From 5:30 to 7 p.m., Grumpy's Handcarved Sandwiches will host a sandwich competition in North Hall at the intersection of High and Manatawny streets. There, students in the college's culinary arts program will compete to make the best tasting sandwich they can with mystery ingredients.
Five teams of two students each will have 45 minutes to create culinary masterpieces for a panel of three judges — MCCC President Victoria Bastecki-Perez, Montgomery County Board of Commissioners Vice Chairman Kenneth E. Lawrence Jr., and state Rep. Joseph Ciresi — to sample.
Grumpy's will list the winning sandwich on its menu for a year and will donate $2 from the sale of each sandwich to MCCC's 25th Anniversary Student Scholarship Fund. The winning students receive sandwich naming rights, a cash prize from Grumpy's and a free class each from MCCC.
Then, a reception will be held from 7 to 9 p.m. on the second floor of North Hall where a timeline of Pottstown's early days and artifacts from the past will be on display.
Therol Dix, J.D. Vice President of Pottstown Campus and Educational Partnerships, Bastecki-Perez and MCCC Board of Trustees Chairwoman Varsovia Fernandez will speak about the college's past, present and future plans, including the opening of the first Challenger Learning Center in Pennsylvania at the Pottstown Campus this year.
Finally, from 8 to 9:15, the entire Pottstown community is invited to Memorial Park, 75 W. King Street, to enjoy a free fireworks finale, MCCC giveaways, music and free food from food trucks.
Free parking will be offered at the college's South Hall lot at 101 College Drive.
25 years in Pottstown
It was in December 1989, that the college's board of trustees passed a resolution to establish a campus in the western part of Montgomery County to complement the Blue Bell campus.
“After looking at several areas, the Board of Trustees Expansion Committee chose Pottstown for several reasons. First, the Committee thought that a Pottstown expansion would help with a borough that had a lower rate of post-secondary education than its peers in some of the more affluent areas of the county. Additionally, because of the county's growth, the commute that took 25 minutes in 1972 took over an hour in the late 1980s,” according to the digital timeline posted on the MCCC website.
“Pottstown had actively courted the new campus, rightly believing that it would be a financial boon for a city trying to recover from the devastating economic hardship that resulted from the exodus of several industries in the 1970s and early 1980s,” according to the timeline.
Construction of the original south campus began in 1995 and took less than two years to complete. The first day of classes was Sept. 5, 1996, and the dedication ceremony was held on Sept. 29, 1996.
Ten years later, in 2006, the former Vaughn Knitting Company building at High and Manatawny streets was converted into North Hall, a multipurpose structure with art studios, classrooms, and conference areas. Before the conversion, that building had been the Nittany Warehouse owned by Pyramid Chemical, which was investigated by the Environmental Protection Agency and cleaned out after a series of articles in The Mercury about the dangerous, poorly stored chemicals inside.
The pedestrian underpass, converted from an arch for a mill race that ran beneath the Norfolk Southern rail line, was completed a year later, creating a link between the two campus buildings.
In 2012, through the University Center concept, classes began being taught at Montco, but credits are issued through one of the cooperating 4-year institutions.
Both the North Hall/pedestrian connection and the wind turbines and stormwater managing parking lot at the “sustainability hub at the former PECO building at 140 College Drive in Riverfront Park, also the home to the Schuylkill River National Heritage Area, won planning awards from Montgomery County.
This year that building will host the new Challenger Center, one of 40 worldwide facilities dedicated to promoting STEM education in grades 5-8. Affiliated with NASA, it gives young students real-life experience in how science and math lessons translate into real jobs in the field. Pottstown students will be the first to use it.
In 2019, Bastecki-Perez told Pottstown Borough Council the school's board of directors is also looking into a more integrated “campus feel” for the Pottstown Campus. Plans for a $4.2 million renovation to South Hall, the original building on College Drive, are in the works.
According to the presentation made to the council, which is conceptual in nature, South Hall would become the “Innovation Pavilion;” the North Hall on High Street would become the “Creativity Pavilion;” the former PECO building in Riverfront Park would become the “STEM Pavilion” and the former railroad freight building off South Hanover Street would become the “Community and Commerce Pavilion.”
Additionally, the college is also looking at creating community gardens, a market and a community play space on the property on the north side of College Drive between South Hanover Street and South Hall.
The college wants to “better connect the buildings in Pottstown, and give it more of a ‘campus feel,'” BasteckiPerez told the council.
That could even include a large entrance sign at Pottstown's South Gateway entrance off the Hanover Street bridge.