BREMERTON — With golden shovels — and one excavator — digging ceremoniously into a big pile of dirt, construction of Olympic College’s new College Instruction Center has officially begun.

“We’ve been working on this project for about seven years,” said OC President David Mitchell, “and we’re just delighted that this day is finally here.”

The center will be a 70,000-square-foot facility for the art, music, theater, physical therapy and some nursing programs, as well as some simulation labs for nursing and high-tech, active-learning classrooms on the Bremerton OC campus. Budgeted at $46.5 million, it is the largest-funded project in state community and technical college history. It will also include a 276-seat theater to provide a venue for campus and community events like the Olympic Jazz Festival and youth symphony programs.

“This building really does enhance learning,” Mitchell said. “It’s not just bricks and mortar. Students love new buildings.”

Mitchell described the building as a STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and math) building. Basically, it’s got something for everyone.

“It’s all about community,” said Walter Schacht, principal owner of the architectural firm partnered with OC on this project, Schacht Aslani Architects. “This building, as Dr. Mitchell says, has the arts in it, and the arts bring people together. The building also has health occupations in it, and those … programs serve the need of Kitsap and Mason counties’ growing populations.”

Schacht added that the new center will be a “connection between the town and gown,” with the theater bringing community members in for performances of all kinds.

“The building is going to create a place that brings students from all over the campus together,” Schacht said.

Also in attendance at the groundbreaking ceremony were senators Christine Rolfes and Jan Angel, both instrumental in getting the project green lit and funded at the state level, as well as Bremerton mayor Patty Lent, who has also championed the project.

Rolfes said that spending more than seven years to get this project going “reflects tremendous commitment from everybody at the school.”

“Paraphrasing Winston Churchill, this day marks the end of the beginning. It’s taken a long time to get here. And it marks the beginning of the end for the parking lot and the old arts buildings,” Rolfes said.

“But more importantly, this is really a continuation. It’s a continued expansion of the tremendous opportunities that this college has been offering to students in our communities for years.”

Come 2017, when Schacht said the building should be complete, there will be a new gathering place for students in many different programs, and even those outside of the programs with an informal studying area and the performance aspect of the building. As Rolfes said, “This building is worth the investment.”

At the end of the ceremony, nearly a dozen shovels were wielded for the symbolic turning of the dirt to kick off construction. Mitchell followed the display by using an excavator for his “shovel”-full.

Angel may have put it best when she said, “In closing, there’s only one thing to say: Hip hip hooray!”