Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary has signed a purchase agreement for a new primary campus site in Southern California east of Los Angeles near the Ontario International Airport.
In announcing the formal purchase and sale agreement to the seminary community, Jeff Iorg, Golden Gate president, said, “We have chosen a facility to meet the needs of students in the 21st century. We will soon have a high-quality educational delivery center with excellent facilities for fulfilling our mission of shaping leaders in the future.”
Iorg also announced that the seminary will ask that a new name — Gateway Seminary of the Southern Baptist Convention — be approved by the convention.
Room to build
The new site includes a six-story building, an adjacent ready-to-build lot and more than 700 parking places in the city of Ontario, part of Southern California’s Inland Empire region. The building was constructed in 2009 and has remained vacant due to the economic downturn. The building’s exterior is finished but its interior is unfinished.
The six-story building encompasses approximately 153,000 square feet, while a future building, at 75,000 square feet, can be constructed for such uses as a chapel, library, offices or classrooms. By comparison, the seminary’s core campus buildings in Mill Valley, Calif., are only 121,000 square feet. Thus the new Southern California building is about 20 percent larger than the seminary’s current facilities, with room on the new site to nearly double the size of the current facilities.
“A seminary for the 21st century needs space for students, faculty, library, worship and administration. We will soon have state-of-the-art facilities for all these purposes, plus the most advanced educational technology available,” Iorg said.
In contrasting the seminary’s new model with other campus models, Iorg said, “When millions of people have not yet heard the name of Jesus, our school must model frugality and simplicity to prioritize resources for global missions. Our tuition must be kept low so students can graduate without seminary-created debt. Our future resources must be focused on people and programs — not facilities.”
While the new campus plan also does not include on-site student housing, Iorg indicated it is still a priority. “Not using a traditional model does not mean we will not facilitate student housing. It simply means the housing won’t be at a traditional campus location,” he said.
The seminary currently is finalizing plans to secure use permits, finish the building’s interior and prepare for relocation by June 2016.
In commenting on the reasons for selecting the proposed name of Gateway Seminary, Iorg said, “The new name connects to our heritage, frees us from geographic designations, allows for developing a more global identity and acknowledges our Baptist distinctive.”
(BP)
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