CMC Breckenridge completes two major construction projects

Student apartments plus nursing simulation and outdoor skills lab open for fall semester

Sept. 7, 2023 – With construction complete at the Colorado Mountain College Breckenridge campus, students are moving into a new apartment building and classes are in session at a nursing simulation and outdoor skills lab that’s been added to the existing campus building. The college will host ribbon cuttings and open houses on Sept. 14, and the public is welcome and encouraged to attend.

Place to call home

The student apartment building is part of an initiative to provide affordable places to live for CMC students. Due to the scarcity and high cost of housing in the mountain resort communities that CMC serves, the college has invested over $45 million to construct four duplicate apartment buildings on campuses in Spring Valley, Vail Valley at Edwards, Steamboat Springs and Breckenridge.

Designed primarily for upper-division students who live and work in these mountain communities year-round, each building has up to 36 rental apartments, with a combination of studio and two-bedroom units. Each apartment features full kitchens, full bathrooms and living spaces. Rents are well below market rates.

The new apartments are located on campus, adjacent to the 30-unit Denison Commons apartments, which CMC acquired from the town of Breckenridge in 2017 as part of the college’s efforts to address limited student housing options.

Health sciences lab addition

The campus will hold a second ribbon cutting and hold tours for its new 7,761-square-foot nursing simulation and outdoor skills lab.

The addition serves two educational purposes for the campus’s health sciences programs. The outdoor skills section of the lab features an ambulance bay for emergency medical technician students to practice moving patients from emergency vehicles to medical facilities, while a two-story rappelling wall inside the lab gives wilderness EMT students a feel for transporting injured patients from mountain environments to emergency care.

The nursing simulation portion of the lab resembles a hospital wing, with a labor and delivery room, an emergency room, a medical-surgical room and more. There is also an eight-bed skills practice area with a classroom. High-fidelity manikins have the ability to simulate real-life medical conditions, such as heart attacks, strokes and complicated deliveries.

The lab answers a need in the region to provide training to more nurses and emergency medical professionals. With the added space, the Breckenridge campus will be able to add six more nursing students per class to the current 12 students the campus has been able to accept.

Additionally, since nursing students are allowed to complete as much as half of their required clinical hours in simulation labs such as those at CMC Steamboat Springs, Spring Valley and now, Breckenridge, students can avoid costly out-of-town trips to large hospitals on the Front Range or other locations so they’re able to reach their nursing education goals more efficiently.

The nursing and outdoor skills lab addition came in at an overall cost of $8.5 million, and the CMC Foundation is seeking to raise a remaining $1 million.

CMC Breckenridge’s student apartments ribbon cutting will take place at 3 p.m., Sept. 14 at 107 Denison Placer Road, Breckenridge, followed by a ribbon cutting presentation at CMC Breckenridge’s campus building. Presentations will feature CMC President Dr. Carrie Besnette Hauser and other college and construction personnel involved in the projects. The college will offer tours of the apartments and the campus’s nursing simulation and outdoor skills lab.

For more information, contact Stephanie Beste at 970-989-1308, or sbeste@coloradomtn.edu. More at CMC housing and CMC Breckenridge's nursing simulation and outdoor skills lab.