BATON ROUGE, La. — State officials want to delay the court-ordered
deadline for opening a new community college so they can locate the
campus on what is now Louisiana State Police headquarters.
State police plan to start vacating the 35-acre site here in 1998,
and hope to relocate the last of their headquarters from the proposed
campus site in the year 2000.
However, a 1994 higher education desegregation settlement between
the state and the U.S. Justice Department requires a community college
to open in Baton Rouge by fall of 1997.
Any delay in the deadline for opening the community college must be
approved by U.S. District Judge Charles Schwartz, who is overseeing the
higher education desegregation settlement.
Louisiana State Commissioner of Administration Mark Drennen, who
emerged as the driving force last fall in efforts to transform state
police headquarters into a community college, said he’s confident there
will be no problem in getting Judge Schwartz to sign off on the delay.
“I guarantee the judge won’t have trouble with this one — I guarantee it,” Drennen said.
Drennen was instrumental last fall in nixing efforts to locate the
new college in an empty 108,000 square foot office building on 6.8
acres on Lobdell Avenue.
