BEULAVILLE — A new educational public safety building could be possible at James Sprunt Community College. Earlier in December, the Duplin County Board of Commissioners endorsed the college’s proposal to design a new 19,000-square-foot building as part of the college’s master facilities plan.

JSCC president Dr. Lawrence Rouse introduced the topic to commissioners during their most recent meeting. As part of the college’s strategic plan, a facilities master plan was developed with three priorities listed: the first, a public safety building; the second, an allied health building; and finally, the college may expand trade programs currently offered.

The public safety building would educate students in the following fields: EMS/ life saving; fire training; corrections; parole and law enforcement.

Although the economy is in a recession, Rouse told the board that JSCC is looking into the future — past the recession. “The state is looking at a statewide bond in the near future,” he said. “After the economy recovers, the community college system will try to go for a statewide bond and get money to build buildings on various campuses.”

Rouse said he wants JSCC to be ready.

“One of the things we want to do is be prepared, if that bond goes through in a couple of years; we will already have a building on the drawing board and, at that point, we can draw down the money and have buildings constructed on our campus,” he stated.

The JSCC president was not asking for money, he said; he wanted the endorsement of the board to use the $90,000 of state money available to the college to design plans which would be ready to use at a later date.

Bruce Bowman with B & S Architects spoke on the project for Rouse. “We studied the land inventory; we studied the programming needs of the long range plan and have developed three priorities,” he said. “ (The) first priority is to develop an EMS life saving, fire training, department of corrections, department of parole, law enforcement building encompassing those training programs.”

Bowman did not address the last two areas of the facilities master plan and gave few details of the desired new public safety building. “The building is estimated to be two stories high, 19,000 square feet, and the area would potentially include a firing range and will cost about $6.75 million,” said Bowman.

The commissioners unanimously voted to endorse the college’s proposal to design a new public safety building on campus.M