Northern Essex Community College’s Haverhill campus turns 50 this year!
After getting our start in the basement of the Greenleaf Elementary School in Bradford in 1961, then expanding into the former Haverhill High School (now City Hall), a few years later; NECC built our current Haverhill campus on a 110-acre parcel of land overlooking Kenoza Lake, alongside the brand new stretch of I-495 that had just been completed, and opened our doors here for the first time in 1971.
Pages from NECC’s 1971-72 Course Catalog show pictures of the Haverhill campus under construction and describe the “magnificent stretch of rolling New England Countryside” deeded to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts from the City of Haverhill as the college’s first permanent campus.
This fall, as the whole college commemorates our 60th anniversary since our founding, we will also be celebrating the 50th birthday of 100 Elliott Street.
Like many of us who turn 50, the Haverhill campus has discovered that as we age, we often have some extra maintenance needs, so for most of this summer, 100 Elliott Street has been a maze of orange cones and caution signs and a cacophony of construction trucks, all busily making improvements for our fall return to campus, and our next half century of serving students at our “Harvard on the Kenoza.”
For most of the summer, visitors to the Haverhill campus have been asked to “Pardon our appearance while under construction.”
After decades of being battered by weather, traffic, and snow plows, all of the curbing around campus is being replaced with brand new New Hampshire granite!
With $1.5M iin funding from the Massachusetts Department of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance (DCAMM), parking lots that have suffered from frost heaves, pot holes, and crumbling asphalt are being completely resurfaced.
After more than a year behind construction fencing, the front door of the Ourania Behrakis Student Center, with new ramps providing full accessibility, along with beautiful new landscaping, will be reopening soon.
Over the past few years, pipe bursts at the aging pump house along Kenoza Road have closed the entire campus. A brand-new pump house will provide more reliable service for years to come.
The gym in the Sport and Fitness Center, home to the NECC Knights Basketball and Volleyball teams, and host to special events like Commencement line-up, Honors Convocation, and Police Academy Graduations, has a newly refinished floor.
In addition to these marvelous renovations and upgrades, as students, faculty, staff and visitors return to the Haverhill campus this fall, they will find:
- More comfortable cooling with rebuilt chillers in the Student Center and A Building
- Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) signage upgrades across campus
- Upgrades to the women’s locker room
- Painting and carpeting upgrades
- New emergency lighting
- A magnificent new mural in the Behrakis Student Center
- And more…
These projects are possible thanks to maintenance funding from the Massachusetts Department of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance (DCAMM) and the leadership and dedication to the safest and best student learning environment possible from NECC CFO/COO Mike McCarthy, the college’s Buildings and Grounds staff, Chief Deb Crafts and our police and public safety officers, and many, many others.
NECC’s Haverhill campus is looking fabulous at 50—and will be ready to greet students, faculty, and staff for the start of our 2021-22 academic year!
