SAN MARCOS - Toting packing boxes filled with textbooks and desk supplies, about 20 science professors on Monday began making themselves comfortable inside Palomar College's new Natural Sciences Building, a project that was about 10 years in the making.

"This is my new home," said Ralph Ferges, chairman of the life sciences department, as he paused from unpacking boxes inside his private office on the second floor. "It's been a long time coming."

The roughly $30 million, 107,000-square-foot building is the first new instructional building at Palomar since the 1970s, said Kelley Hudson-MacIsaac, the college's manager of facilities planning.

"For all the hard work we've put into it, it's really nice to finally see this happen," said Hudson-MacIsaac, adding that although the college broke ground on the project in 2004, complications created by a thick sheet of granite underneath the site delayed its completion.

Construction crews were working on landscaping and last-minute touch-ups to the interior of the building Monday morning, as faculty searched the neon-blue-lit halls for their offices and classrooms.

Located just north of the campus library, the three-story metal and brick tower will be ready for students Aug. 20, the first day of the fall semester. The building includes 20 labs, eight classrooms, a greenhouse, about 70 offices and six lecture halls that can accommodate up to 60 students each.

The biggest building on campus, the Natural Sciences Building represents 20 percent of all instructional classroom capacity at Palomar and will house the chemistry, physics and engineering, life sciences and earth/space/aviation departments, said Candice Francis, interim dean of mathematics, natural and health sciences.

"The faculty is thrilled with the new space," said Francis, who said she started envisioning a new science facility 20 years ago.

Ferges said the building will allow the college to offer additional class sections. For example, the life sciences department now has seven laboratories instead of four, he said.

"We had no more room to grow - we had packed classrooms to the point of overcrowding," he said.

The new building also houses related disciplines in a single structure, rather than spreading them out in six buildings, many of which were built in the 1960s, he said.

As he toured the classroom where he'll teach human physiology in a few weeks, Ferges marveled at the state-of-the-art equipment. Each classroom in the building is equipped with a flat-screen computer, a data projector and two motorized drop-down screens. Modern equipment in the classroom is important because it is similar to what students will encounter in their careers, he said.

"By having a modern facility with more equipment, it puts students in the forefront of their industry," he said.

Geographic information systems, a high-tech mapping program, also benefits from the new digs, said Francis. The lab for that program includes a flat-screen computer at each seat that can be stored within the tabletop when more desk space is needed.

"There's a lot of money invested here," she said, adding that she hopes the geographic information systems program will grow this year.

The new building also includes ventilation and storage improvements that will allow anatomy students to study human cadavers, as well as chemical labs equipped with chemical fume hoods that capture hazardous vapors.

"It's nice to be able to build an area from the ground up that includes modern technology," said astronomy professor Mark Lane. "Students learn more when they see something that is dynamic and interactive."

Though the building was constructed using state funds, $5.2 million from a $694 million bond measure that voters approved in November will help pay for additional equipment and furniture, said Francis.

- Contact staff writer Noelle Ibrahim at (760) 761-4404 or nibrahim@nctimes.com.