Broward College breaks ground on $46.1 million North Campus STEM facility

Broward College broke ground Oct. 20 on a $46.1 million STEM and nursing facility at its North Campus in Coconut Creek. The 52,000-square-foot Building 55 is planned to open in fall 2028, according to the college’s announcement.

Plans call for 10 science laboratories, four nursing labs, a health-assessment room and a nursing classroom. An Information Technology Hub will include cybersecurity and artificial-intelligence labs, along with a makerspace. The mix places medical training alongside science and technology instruction, giving the building a broader academic role than a single-purpose classroom facility.

Building 55 will rise on the site of former Buildings 56 and 57. Broward College says those structures were built in 1974 and 1988, respectively, and housed social and behavioral sciences, mathematics and science classrooms. Replacing them gives the North Campus a new facility designed around current laboratory and clinical instruction needs.

The college’s figures offer a measure of the programs the project is meant to support. During the 2024–25 academic year, its North Campus Science & Wellness Department offered 249 science course sections, including 188 for STEM majors, and served more than 2,500 students. Those are college-reported totals. They describe the department’s scale, not the number of students who will use each new lab.

Broward College expects Building 55 to open in fall 2028 and estimates that it will increase instructional capacity by about 30%. The release says the project will add three teaching laboratories and a dedicated medical laboratory that integrates clinical instruction into coursework. The capacity figure is a projection from the college; the release does not provide a separate utilization forecast or a breakdown by program.

The announcement also points to employment demand in medical laboratories and STEM fields, which the college says is projected to grow by more than 10% through 2032. It does not identify the forecast’s source or define the occupations included in that figure. The projection should therefore be read as the college’s rationale for expanding training, rather than a measured result from the new facility.

The project is designed by Stratus, formerly Zyscovich, and is being built by CORE Construction, according to the college. Broward College lists the total cost as $46.1 million and says funding combines state appropriations with local support. Its announcement does not give the amount supplied by each source, so the funding split remains unclear.

For Coconut Creek and the wider Broward workforce, the immediate change is a construction project with a stated education purpose. The planned labs are intended to give students space for science, nursing, cybersecurity and artificial-intelligence instruction. Whether the added rooms translate into more course seats, graduates or local hires will depend on how the college staffs and schedules the programs after the building opens.

The next major date in the college’s plan is the expected fall 2028 opening. Until then, Building 55 remains under construction, and the college’s capacity and employment figures remain forecasts. Further detail on the project’s funding mix, program schedule and eventual course capacity would show how the investment moves from a groundbreaking into instruction.