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A construction worker operates his heavy vehicle outside the NC HEC. Photo by Maribel Salcido/Staff

NATIONAL CITY – This community’s hub of higher education used to be a hub of criminal activity. Less Wharton and more The Wire.

Dean Christine Perri recalled the days when “walking” more often meant prostitution than graduation.

“We used to be located across the street,” she said. “I remember in the parking structure everybody was always on alert. You had to worry about possibly getting mugged, or your car being broken into or stolen. We literally had prostitution right in front of our building. Students would be walking into class and there would be prostitutes walking right here, along National City Boulevard.”

Perri, dean of the NC HEC and Crown Cove Aquatic Center, said NC HEC helped to transform the community.

“In the 15 years that I’ve been here I’ve actually seen it get a little bit better,” she said. “I do think we’ve pushed out some of the negative stuff that used to occur here.”

Perri said an expansion of the HEC will continue the community’s Renaissance in what used to be known as “The Mile of Bars.”

A $22.5 million Proposition R expansion will add an estimated 400 seats in a new two-story facility that will be constructed adjacent to the current HEC on National City Boulevard. It will feature classrooms, a lecture hall, four laboratories and a medical clinic. A new outdoor courtyard will include a small lawn.

Interim President Robert Deegan said the new space will be a boon to science students.

“For a lot of the programs here (students) need to take anatomy, physiology and microbiology,” Deegan said. “Now they’re going to be able to take all of those courses right here and not have to travel to the Chula Vista campus.”

Deegan said the new facility will include four laboratories.

Perri said the limited availability of prerequisite courses in the HEC’s only laboratory held back students.

“What we heard from the students is that there’s a real bottleneck,” she said. “Students find it challenging to get all their science prerequisites. That really led us to getting a science building.”

National City Mayor Ron Morrison, an SWC alumnus, said the NC HEC was always much too small.

“Five months passed and they said we are maxed out,” he said. “We have no room. We have people wanting to come in. We’ve got to do something about it.”

Morrison said the idea that a few rooms would meet the educational needs of low-income National City was misguided.

“What caused all of this was an underestimation, an undervaluement of what education meant for the area,” he said.

Morrison pledged a strong partnership with SWC.

“The idea of putting a college in the middle of your downtown is something different,” he said. “But that is the commitment that this city has and that is the commitment that we will continue to have with Southwestern College.”

Perri said the dental hygiene program at NC HEC is a benefit to the community.

“One of the successes with the dental hygiene program is that the students need practical experience and in order to gain that they need patients, so we provided (services for) over 3,000 patients a year, free of charge,” she said.

Perri said community service is a focus of the new building, which will feature a community room and a small clinic.

“We wanted to mirror what we have for the dental hygiene program with the medical assisting program,” she said. “So (we plan to) give (students) a fully-functioning clinic, one in which they can invite the community in.”