Editorial: CF’s new campus a game-changer in Levy County – Ocala

We join Levy residents in cheering their new college campus as well as the collective effort of all involved to make this dream become a reality.

It took 13 years. It took the unflinching commitment of an institution and a community. It took persistence and benevolence. In the end, it all came together to make a long-running dream a reality and uplift a community to where it can better educate its citizenry, young and old, and better compete in the 21st century.

Officials for the College of Central Florida gathered Friday in Chiefland to celebrate the opening of the new CF campus in Levy County. It was a satisfying event, no doubt, not just because this rural neighbor of Ocala/Marion County finally had a college campus to call its own, but because of how doggedly the college, its trustees and the Levy County community worked to make it happen.

The idea of a Levy County campus was first floated in 2004 by the CF trustees, who ordered the college staff to begin looking for a site on which to build a campus. A donation of 15 acres of land on U.S. 19 north of Chiefland by local residents Loy Ann and Jack Mann helped determine the site. The college would buy 25 surrounding acres between 2007 and 2010 to establish a 40-acre future campus.

While all this was happening, the community was raising money and the college was lobbying the Legislature for money to build the campus. The effort got a huge boost when it received a $2.5 million gift from lifelong Levy County residents and 45-year schoolteacher Jack Wilkinson in 2009.

But it was not lack of need or lack of support on the homefront that made this project so inexplicably long in coming to fruition. While CF students in Levy County attended classes in a converted Save-A-Lot grocery store that was too small, too technically inferior, too, well, beneath an instituion of CFs stature, college officials pressed their case in Tallahassee.

Despite the obvious need for a better college facility in Levy County, the project was repeatedly rejected not by lawmakers but by governors. It was vetoed twice by former Gov. Charlie Crist and twice more by Gov. Rick Scott.

Finally, in 2014, CF received its first $4.3 million in funding for the campus, which when added to the $3.5 million the community had raised, meant the campus was halfway to being fully paid for. Last year, the state came through with the remaining $7.3 million needed to complete the project.

Named the Jack Wilkinson Levy Campus, the new CF building has 44,000 square feet more than triple the space of its previous quarters with enough room for its 800-900 students, plus all its faculty. There are 292 student stations, five multi-purpose classrooms, faculty offices and a student center. It will allow for more classes to be taught and provide better resources for both students and faculty.

And a lot of credit goes to the CF trustees, who remained committed to the project despite repeated political and funding setbacks. Credit also goes to the community for working to raise money and stir support in the state capital. Of course, Wilkinson and the Manns deserve special thanks.

The Jack Wilkinson Levy Campus is a game-changer for our neighbors to the west. We join them in cheering their new college campus as well as the collective effort of all involved to make this dream become a reality.

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Editorial: CF's new campus a game-changer in Levy County - Ocala