Long-delayed Harper College project finally breaks ground

An artist’s rendering shows the three-story, 144,000-square-foot Canning Student Center at Harper College in Palatine. Officials held a ceremonial groundbreaking late last week for a project that was held up by the state budget stalemate in 2015 and was proposed first in 2001.
Courtesy of Harper College

Delayed by a historic state budget stalemate and the pandemic, a building project decades in the making has finally broken ground at Harper College.

Ken Ender, the Palatine-based community college’s former president, admits the plight of the proposed one-stop student center has long “haunted” him.

“I thought, it’s a win right out of the box,” Ender recalled of his hiring in 2009. “We actually had a fence around it. We were ready to go. Until something called a budget freeze took place. And we went from the top of the list to the bottom of the list, with respect to its funding source.”

“And here we are,” said Ender, who retired in 2019 but returned to campus late last week for the ceremonial groundbreaking of the three-story, 144,000-square-foot Canning Student Center.

It was an event decades in the making. The Harper building was placed on the Illinois Community College Board’s list of capital projects first in 2001, years before the infamous budget battle between then-Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and then-Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan that started in 2015.

In the spring of 2015, shovels already were in the ground to remove underground utilities and prep the site. Construction bids were set to go out in June — the same month Rauner postponed any further work on state-supported capital projects until a balanced budget was in place. Harper finished removing the utilities, but without the promised state funds, sealed up the construction site.

The project remained in limbo until a state budget was approved in 2017, but the funds weren’t released until 2021 and 2022.

The Canning Student Center will be located in the middle of Harper College’s Palatine campus, intended to be a one-stop shop for student programs and services.
Courtesy of Harper College

Costs have escalated significantly since the onset of the pandemic.

The estimate for the new student center — now including a University Center that was initially planned as a stand-alone building — was $83 million in 2020.

Today, it’s $101.6 million.

The state, which is overseeing design and construction of the project through the Illinois Capital Development Board, appropriated $46.4 million from the $45 billion Rebuild Illinois program Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker championed after taking office in 2018.

Harper is paying $55.2 million, including $38.5 million from a November 2018 referendum. That’s when voters agreed to continue a tax increase that was otherwise due to expire to help fund campus building projects.

Avis Proctor, Harper’s president since 2019, said many around campus have wondered if the building would ever get built.

“When I first arrived at Harper, I can hear the refrain, ‘When are we getting Canning? When are we getting Canning?’” Proctor said.

But once complete, the building “will not just be the center of campus, it will also be our front door, as well as the living room for our students,” she said.

Located in the heart of campus, the building will centralize programs and services that now are spread across campus. That includes admissions, academic advising, registrar, center for new students and orientation, job placement resource center, cultural center, spaces for student organizations and a spirit shop with Harper-branded items.

The Canning Student Center will include this community staircase to encourage social interaction and engagement, officials said.
Courtesy of Harper College

The new building will house the college’s hospitality management program, which is relocating from the basement of one of the original 55-year-old buildings on campus. The new labs will include teaching kitchens, a mock hotel and restaurant.

Also relocating to the building is the University Center, where students can complete bachelor’s and master’s degrees by way of Harper’s partnerships with DePaul University, Northern Illinois University, Roosevelt University and Southern Illinois University. A total of 11 undergraduate programs and one MBA are offered on the Palatine campus.

The building is named for Rita and John Canning, who donated $1 million in 2013 for scholarships for female students who are low income, victims of domestic violence, single parents or are studying English as a second language. At the event last Thursday, the couple announced another $1 million donation over the next five years.

Construction is expected to be complete in the summer of 2027.