Long Beach City College officially broke ground Wednesday on a $102 million student support center, slated to open in fall 2027 on the Liberal Arts Campus.
LBCC Board of Trustees President Uduak-Joe Ntuk kicked off the ceremony. “It’s just a hole today,” he said, referencing the footprint of the future center, currently a basement of excavated dirt, “but you can see from the renderings that it’s going to be fantastic.”
The three-story Building E will be the “heart of this college,” Vice President of Administrative and Business Services Candace Jones said. The center will support students and foster connection through a range of services, including basic needs, a family center, student affairs, international and first-year student support, a social justice and intercultural center and a new cafeteria, designed to feed an influx of students as more housing is built. All of it, said President Mike Muñoz, is intended to promote student belonging and success.
Several years ago, when LBCC conducted a campuswide survey, only 49% of students reported feeling that they mattered or belonged at the college, a statistic that “blew my mind,” Muñoz said. In particular, he added, the survey showed students found the physical space unwelcoming: while the grounds were beautiful, students said, the stark white walls inside felt sterile.
“Students didn’t necessarily see themselves in the buildings that they were walking through,” he said. It was a wake-up call for Muñoz who initiated a campaign to shift the campus culture and create spaces for the student community. In the last two years, student-reported belonging has risen to 92%. Muñoz said students who graduated years ago tell him that LBCC feels far more welcoming now than it did 10 years ago.
The campus center is core to that mission, said Muñoz, who navigated his own community college experience as a single father. “We’re transforming how we center some of the more marginalized students,” on campus — everyone from veterans to formerly incarcerated students to student-parents, he said.
This plan has been years in the making, and the budget has grown significantly from early estimates. Jeff Connell, associate vice president of capital planning and facilities, attributed the larger budget to market forces as well as design changes — increased square footage, the addition of glass and steel to create more open spaces — aimed to be responsive to student needs and input.
Measure LB, a bond measure approved by more than 60% of Long Beach voters in 2016, will fund the project; $450 million remains in Measure LB bonds, Connell said.
From student input to sustainability, the college is rethinking “physical space beyond just pretty landscapes and Spanish architecture,” Muñoz said. A huge part of the design and revision process was the solicitation of direct student feedback through user groups, he said. Even the building’s staircases reflect students’ requests for an open concept and spaces to congregate.
Priince Bass, who entered LBCC as a homeless student and is now the Associated Student Body President, expressed tremendous excitement on behalf of the student body, especially for the space for student parents, which he said the LBCC community advocated for.
The groundbreaking event and the way the college has approached the design give him “hope that the school is invested in our future,” he said.
Ina-Marie Timbo, a biology student who first started at LBCC in 2017, said she enjoyed watching the project evolve over time, even though she likely won’t be at the college when the new building opens in 2027. “Maybe I’ll come back in two years” to see it completed, she said. Until then, she’ll observe its construction piece by piece.