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CGCC opens $4.2 million hangar at Gateway
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Chandler-Gilbert Community College Provost John Schroeder speaks at the grand opening Wednesday of the school's 22,000-square-foot hangar located at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport. March 11, 2009.
Tim Hacker, Tribune
Chandler-Gilbert Community College opened a $4.2 million hangar Wednesday at its Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport campus.
The 22,000-square-foot facility houses offices, learning space and a flight simulator. It will facilitate a 40 percent increase in the school's student body.
CGCC partners with the University of North Dakota, which runs a flight training program at the airport.
The building will be home to the operations of both schools, said Trish Niemann, CGCC spokeswoman.
"We used to train students for the first two years and then pass them over to UND," she said. "Now, they're located in the same building, so it really makes for a seamless transition for students."
Niemann, who said the school had been leasing an existing hangar at the airport, said the new one will allow officials to increase enrollment, which currently numbers 143.
"It will actually give us the ability to handle over 200 students," she said. "It's a larger hangar, so it allows for more ... students (and) it allows for more aircraft in there for them to work on."
Brian Sexton, Gateway spokesman, said the new hangar is a big deal for the airport authority because it's a progression of the school's aviation maintenance and flight program, which was instrumental in attracting aircraft services centers like Cessna, Hawker Beechcraft and Embraer.
CGCC offers the only Federal Aviation Administration-approved community college aviation maintenance and flight program in the Valley. It includes, among other specialties, aircraft maintenance, electronics/avionics and aircraft construction.
"This hangar is a maturation of that program, and it just makes it that much better and more attractive for other business," Sexton said.
Gateway closed as a military base in 1993 and reopened as a public airport in 1994.
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