San Diego Mesa College opened its doors to the public in 1964 and has now become one of the primary community colleges in the San Diego area. Thousands of students benefit from Mesa’s wide array of majors, transfer programs, and now bachelor’s programs in select fields. It also provides many athletic teams as well as expansive student services that are used continuously throughout the year.
However, despite some improvements to the campus in the last decade, Mesa College still appears to have outdated facilities that have not kept up with the ever-changing landscape of education and technological advances that society has taken since Mesa’s first opening back in 1964.
The most recent construction on campus was the opening of the Business and Technology (BT) building in 2019, which marked the final projects connected to Propositions S and N.
According to their website, The Mesa2030 Comprehensive Master plan is a high-level planning document that outlines the Educational and Facilities vision for the next 10 years. The plan was developed by a representative taskforce appointed by the Planning and Institutional Effectiveness Committee and was approved by the San Diego Community College District Board in May 2021.
Mesa2030’s goals, according to the website, are a call to action that describe what the college intends to accomplish over the coming decade. All other college-wide planning, including unit-level planning in program review, will describe how departments and units will do their part to achieve the Mesa2030 Goals. This integration of short-term planning with long-term planning ensures that the college will direct the investment of its human, physical and fiscal resources to strategies that promise to advance the Mesa2030 goals.
In section five of the plan titled, “The Future Campus,” the Mesa2030 plan lays out proposed renovations and some that are just preliminary ideas, such as isolating San Diego MET high school into what is now the large parking lot on the east side of Mesa College, new parking structures along the hillside, and new housing for students.
The problems that arise within this plan are extensive and will strongly influence the day-to-day operations around the campus.
The first, and most notable, issue with the plan is the major reduction in available parking for Mesa students, as students have returned for in-person classes after the reduction in COVID-19 cases and the exit from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The major reduction in an already scarce parking situation, as the proposed parking structure(s) are being constructed, will force more students to either park off campus, where parking is already scarce because of protections residents who live near Mesa College have taken to protect parking in their neighborhoods, or add more traffic onto the MTS buses that come near campus, lines 41 and 44, which are already operating at capacity at peak times.
This also considers that despite, because of the pandemic, students are utilizing online classes, the parking situation at Mesa College continues to be an issue. There is also no guarantee that the new proposed structures would be sufficient for Mesa students due to the rapid, rising numbers in attendance.
The second issue is that, as we are already approaching the halfway point of 2025 and of the current decade, that only leaves construction crews 4-1/2 years to complete these new projects. It seems highly unlikely that these complex construction plans proposed would be completed on time and within the time frame(s) that are given in the plan.
As Mesa students continue to keep their patience with outdated performing arts, language arts, and athletic facilities, a lack of student parking, and a boisterous plan that doesn’t seem accomplishable, only the future will tell if the plan can ultimately become successful.
