CNM prepares to open new facilities ahead of anniversary celebration. Here's a look inside.

The largest community college in New Mexico is getting ready to open its new state-of-the-art trade school after five years of planning and two years of construction as it celebrates its 60th anniversary as an institution.

In conjunction with its anniversary festivities scheduled for Wednesday, Central New Mexico Community College will cut the ribbon on its newest addition to campus. The new building will serve students looking to enter specialty trade careers such as welding, carpentry, plumbing and construction.

The Journal was granted an exclusive tour of the five new buildings, whose construction was primarily completed before the ribbon-cutting ceremony and the beginning of the semester.

“Beautiful craftsmanship, and you can see it everywhere,” CNM Project Manager Maia Mullen said, walking around the 60,000-square-foot facility on Friday.

The five buildings feature high ceilings and a plethora of natural light via floor-to-ceiling windows and, in some cases, garage doors. Also, all the buildings’ exposed HVAC systems are painted blue, fire systems are painted orange and electrical work is painted yellow, to highlight them so students can observe firsthand the systems they are training on in action.

“As students move through the space, they understand that to turn on the light on here, you can actually follow the yellow conduit all the way through down the hallway, back to the panel,” Mullen said. “The building is a living system.”

The trade school will feature a courtyard between a “north bar,” which houses administration, plumbing, construction and electrical labs, and a “south end,” where the welding and carpentry labs are located.

According to Mullen, the welding lab is the largest in the country’s southwestern region. There are 64 different welding stations for students to learn.

The new facilities cost just under $59 million, with $45 million going to construction. The skilled trades complex is anticipated to serve over 1,000 students this fall, and is slated to be open and functioning by September, when classes begin.

The investment comes when demand for trade labor is high and more people are considering pursuing a skilled labor career instead of a four-year degree.

Plans for the latest addition came just before the pandemic, and the school broke ground during the summer of 2023. The project cost around $670 a square foot — well over the projected initial amount — due to skyrocketing materials costs following the pandemic and an increased demand for skilled labor jobs, similar to the ones the school hopes to become a premier training ground for.

While trades are growing in popularity, CNM’s roots began in workforce training when it opened as the Technical Vocational Institute (TVI) in 1965.

“TVI started with 150 some students, a couple of programs in trades and very hardworking, clear, relevant education and training,” CNM President Tracy Hartzler said in an interview earlier this month. “We haven’t veered from that, and that’s rare, that we are that consistent and that we’ve done it in a culture of caring.”