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Construction continues for Coastline’s Newport campus

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The crack of hammers and metallic buzzing of power tools echoed throughout the partially finished building at Coastline Community College’s new Newport Beach campus Wednesday.

Walking along an outdoor corridor complete with ocean views, officials took in the many unfinished rooms littered with equipment and electrical work hanging from the ceiling.

“What is right behind you is a typical classroom,” said John Weaver, who led the tour and is with C.W. Driver, the construction management company.

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College and district officials donned hard hats to tour the $48-million campus at 1515 Monrovia Ave., which is expected to be completed in the fall and have classes starting in the spring.

“It will be wonderful that the college will now be out in the community,” said retired faculty member Sally Kurz, a Coastline Foundation board member. “So many students come from Newport Beach and Costa Mesa.”

The new permanent campus will replace the Costa Mesa site on Mesa Verde Drive East. Furthermore, for the Fountain Valley-based Coastline — which also has campuses in Garden Grove and Westminster — the Newport location reinforces the college’s evolution from a “wall-less” college using 80 different sites in 1976 to a more traditional route with permanent sites, said Coastline President Loretta Adrian.

“We found that everyone knew about Orange Coast and Golden West [colleges], but they didn’t have anything to identify Coastline,” Kurz said. “We realized that we really needed to have a presence in the community.”

The 3.4-acre site between Monrovia Avenue and the Banning Ranch project will accommodate more students and, hopefully, attract more traditional, full-time students, Adrian said.

The building, with glass walls on its ocean side, features many sides angled at 7 degrees — just how a sailboat would react to the breeze coming off the ocean, said Glenn Carels, the design principal of architecture company LPA Inc.

“One of the things we wanted to capture here was the presence of being close to the ocean,” he said.

The campus is being built to Gold Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification with solar panels, irrigation with reclaimed water, zero storm runoff and a sustainable roof garden.

Measure C, a $370-million bond measure approved in 2002, is funding the building.

However, the foundation still needs to raise $5 million to support programs. Officials are hoping to raise the money through naming rights, said foundation Executive Director Mariam Khosravani.

“What we’re offering here is a very unique opportunity to tie your name to something that is going to be around for a very long time,” said Seth Ellison, foundation board member.

britney.barnes@latimes.com

Twitter: @britneyjbarnes

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