Scott Community College
moves forward with 2nd entrance

By Sheena Dooley | Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Reprinted from the Quad City Times

It took more than a decade, but Scott Community College’s main campus will finally get a badly needed second entrance this year.

College leaders expect to start work on the additional entrance to the Belmont Road campus this spring after securing federal dollars and other taxpayer money to pay for the more than $2.2 million project. They plan to complete work on the project, which will connect with the main entrance road and loop down to U.S. 67, by November.

“We want to start it as soon as possible,” said Kirk Barkdoll, facilities director for the Eastern Iowa Community College District, which oversees Scott Community College.

Scott Community officials identified the need for the entrance about

10 years ago, but a lack of funding and turnover in top administrators prevented it from happening, leaders said. That changed in the fall, however, when voters approved a $33 million referendum for the college district to improve its campuses.

Barkdoll said Scott Community will use about $1.7 million of that money and a $490,000 federal grant to cover the cost of the entrance, which was designed last year. 

“We frontloaded the project because we didn’t want to be in a position where we had the money but didn’t have a design,” he said.

Thomas Coley, president of the college, stepped up efforts for the additional entryway, which is expected to ease traffic congestion and security concerns, when he took the helm about three years ago.

When the college built the original entrance off Belmont Road, the school had two buildings spanning 25,000 square feet and served 400 students. For the most part, the surrounding area was undeveloped, and Pleasant Valley High School had just opened down the road.

Today, the campus has grown to include three buildings that together cover 214,000 square feet. The college now enrolls 7,300 students, a majority of whom take classes at the Belmont campus. Pleasant Valley High serves more than 1,100 students, a number that continues to increase.

All of that has led to traffic jams as more people use Belmont Road on a regular basis. The rural two-lane road lacks shoulders and turn lanes, which has created problems for people trying to leave the college at the same time Pleasant Valley students are going to or from school.

City officials in Bettendorf and Riverdale are looking this spring to improve the road by widening it and adding turn lanes and traffic lights. Barkdoll said the college will spend an additional $452,000, most of which will come from a grant, to move and improve its main entrance when the two cities start work on the road.

Barkdoll said the district is planning to get most of the work done on both projects during the summer months to avoid creating further traffic congestion for students and staff.

“The intention is to start the work closest to the campus in the spring and move our way down,” he said. “It’s not going to cause a huge disruption.”