Staff Writer Haley Aguayo

Dallas College has broken ground on the newest edition to the Richland Campus land- scape: Red River Hall. On March 10, a conference was held in a parking lot at Dallas College Richland Campus, the soon-to-be site of the campus’ newest building.

Construction of the new building is scheduled to begin on April 1, 2022 and will include 41 classrooms, not including the additional conference rooms. There will also be a new cafe. An official opening of the new hall should take place in June of 2023 if everything goes according to plan.

All the buildings on campus are named after bodies of water, people, places and tribes in Texas. The Red River building is named after the Red River in northern Texas that borders Oklahoma.

Eggleston compared it to the same way a parent chooses a name for their child. “We felt Red River Hall was an appropriate name for this building,” she said.

The lot had been closed off by metal fences and tarps for months but that changed on the morning of the groundbreaking event. Signs along Walnut Street leading onto Richland East enticingly guided you, as much as an inanimate object could, to attend a clear celebration as passersby could see balloons float a few feet above the ground from a once vacant lot.

Walking into the lot, certain areas of the fences had been unlocked and opened wide to reveal paved walkways lined with pictures of what Red River Hall will look like from the inside and out.

President of Richland Campus Kathryn “Kay” Eggleston greeted guests as they arrived. Staff and school board committee representatives visited with one and other until Janet James, executive assistant to Eggleston, corralled the crowd to their seats, insinuating that the conference was about to commence.

Eggleston said the new building will be one of the largest buildings on campus aside from Sabine Hall, noting that the new building would be 100,000 square feet, relatively small compared to the 243 acres that make up the campus. This new building’s main purpose is to give more housing to dual credit high school classes and students seeking to receive their associate degrees the same time they receive their high school diplomas.

Eggleston said there were many aspects that went into the thought process of the initial creation of this building. One was “being mindful always of the quality of physical surroundings and their impact on the educational outcome and success of our students.”

“We are so excited that it will also include expansion of the School of Business, so that we can expand our already excellent accounting program and to expand into the finance area with the state-of-the-art Bloomberg Financial Markets Lab,” Eggleston said.

This building is accredited to Dallas County residents voting for a bond program for Dallas College. Dallas College board of trustees chair Monica Lira Bravo, said on behalf of the board of trustees for being thankful of voters approving the bond. “Thank you, Dallas County voters, for approving [the] 1.1 billion dollar bond that will help us not only construct, improve, renovate and equip buildings at all seven of our campuses across Dallas County,” Bravo said.

Justin Lonon, Dallas College chancellor, was one of eight speakers during the ground- breaking and joked that despite being on only his second week as chancellor, everything was “so far so good” with the campuses. He thanked the trustees that came out to speak as he elaborated on the fact that this building will be a physical representation of the growth of community colleges. “This sort of vision and future have progress. With these classrooms, the conference rooms, even a designated bus stop, those little things make a big difference in the lives of individuals,” Lonon said.

“We like you, but we want you to leave,” Mike Walker, vice provost of business, hospitality, and global trade jokingly said in his speech.

Eggleston said the building was designed virtually throughout the pandemic lock- down. “The most crucial factor in planning it was being able to bring our vision to reality within the constraints of virtual operations. I think what we were able to accomplish virtually was just short of astonishing because this building is going to be stunning.”