The Tooele County School District announced plans Wednesday to bond for $25 million to build a new multi-use learning facility in Tooele.

The 96,000-square-foot facility will be built on eight acres donated to the district by Tooele City at the west end of 200 South, just off of Tooele Boulevard and Milburn Avenue, next to the growing Utah State University Tooele campus.

The facility will house career and technical education programs, as well as the district’s alternative high school and adult education departments. Salt Lake Community College, Salt Lake-Tooele Applied Technology College, and Utah State University will all be joint users of the facility.

“This is the culmination of two years of talk and discussion,” said Tooele County School District Superintendent Terry Linares. “The learning facility will be a multi-use facility that will be used not only by the school district but also the community and other education providers in the county.”

The building has been designed with two wings. The first floor has a culinary arts classroom and production facility that will provide instruction and food services for the facility. The first floor will also include administrative offices, a cosmetology lab, child development classroom, graphic design lab, adult education rooms, classrooms and media lab for the alternative high school, and a gymnasium with locker rooms.

The gymnasium will primarily serve the alternative high school but is also designed with a separate access so it can be used by the community in the evenings.

On the second floor are four general classrooms, a science and biotechnology classroom, computer software and hardware labs, an engineering classroom and labs and classroom for medical, dental and nursing programs.

Moving to the new facility will allow the alternative high school to expand up to 200 students, from a current enrollment 50 students, said Shanz Leonelli, principal of the school.

“This will allow us to increase the percentage of students that graduate from high school and at the same time provide students with an experience that will prepare them to enter the workforce,” Leonelli said.

Currently the alternative school is located in the last remaining wooden army barracks on Tooele Army Depot — a building scheduled for demolition.

The district’s adult education program served 648 students last year, with a graduating class of 86, according to program coordinator Linda Conway.

The adult education program primarily serves adults that want to earn a high school diploma, along with adults seeking a G.E.D., learning English as a second language and developing basic computer skills. The typical student is between 25 to 40 years old, according to Conway.

“The new facility will help us serve more adults as well as provide career and technical education for them in the same facility,” Conway said.

Currently, several high school students from Tooele County board buses at 6 a.m. and leave the county to take career and technical classes at a facility in the Jordan School District.

“We are grateful to Jordan School District for accommodating our students,” Linares said. “With this facility, we will not need to bus our students. They can obtain the education they need right here in Tooele.”

Linares said the facility will be built without a tax increase. Construction is scheduled to begin around the end of February or the beginning of March, and should be completed in August 2010.

The concept for the career and technology center was first announced at a Tooele County Chamber of Commerce luncheon last year. At that time, the price tag for the facility was announced as $10 million.

“This new facility will be great for high school students and adults in our community,” Linares said. “It will be a true multi-use facility working around the clock. I imagine it will be open from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m.”

Tim Gillie: tgillie@tooeletranscript.com