Since January, those attending SFUAD, Santa Fe High School or running on De Vargas Middle School’s track have watched construction at the corner of Yucca Street and Siringo Road transform a vacant lot into the 34,000 square-foot, two-story, energy-friendly structure it is today. The grand opening of Santa Fe’s Higher Education Center is scheduled for Jan. 14, 2015. “The area is now considered the educational hub of the city,” says Henry Mignardot, construction project manager of the city’s new Higher Education Center (HEC) located at 1950 Siringo Road, adjacent to The Santa Fe University of Art and Design campus. Commissioned in 2009 by New Mexico’s Higher Education Department, HEC was built to accommodate the growing need for affordable higher education programs that allow locals, especially students from the Santa Fe Community College (SFCC), to complete their degrees in Santa Fe. “I was very reluctant to be put in a community college program,” says Santa Fe local Brenden Romero, who began his degree in business at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, but decided not to continue after his first year. Returning to Santa Fe, Romero resumed his studies at SFCC through mostly online courses. He explains, however, that as a transfer he faced some obstacles in validating his credits, so the establishment of a higher education center “made that whole process a lot easier and was very helpful,” Romero says. “It gave me that push to finish.” Romero adds that because he is a visual learner, being in a classroom and in a physical university site is important to him. And though he believes the intersection of Yucca Street and Siringo is “going to be pretty clustered” with the addition of HEC, it’s also conveniently just down street from his home. “Having the Center adjacent to SFUAD is a huge plus,” says SFCC President Randy W. Grissom, “and having it easily accessible to...