Construction on the welcome center began this year and is expected to be finished by summer 2022, said Chris Eyle, vice president of facilities and construction at Collin College.
The new center will be about 40,000 square feet and serve as a hub for students’ needs, including academic counseling, class sign-ups and payments. The campus served more than 4,600 students this past fall, officials said.
“It’s that one-stop shop, whereas the rest of the campus will be for academic classes itself,” Eyle said.
While this area is under construction, renovations will also take place at the campus’ existing food service area in the main building, across the sidewalk from the welcome center, Eyle said. Renovations will be done to the kitchen and dining areas.
Another renovation at the campus is an addition to the college’s dental hygiene program that will install more stations. This will help accommodate more students since the program is “extremely popular,” Eyle said.
The parking lot on the west side of the campus has also been ripped out and the entryway reworked so the entryway leads right to the new welcome center, Eyle said. About 500 parking spaces were added to the newly finished parking lot.
“It makes it a lot more efficient and easy to navigate both as a pedestrian and as a vehicle because the previous version ... got very confusing as far as how to drive and how to walk through there,” Eyle said.
Once the new welcome center finishes construction, crews will then tear down the old facility that was used for firearms training and qualification near the library. Eyle said those services moved over to the college’s Public Safety Training Center back in 2017, and the building serves no purpose anymore, he said.
The building will be removed and the area it was in will be green space, with all projects completed next summer, Eyle said.
Collin College McKinney (Central Park)
2200 W. University Drive, McKinney
972-548-6790
www.collin.edu/campuses/centralpark
Mon.-Fri. 6:30 a.m.-11 p.m., Sat. 7 a.m.-5 p.m., Sun. 1-5 p.m
