DANVERS – Morning sunlight poured though three stories’ worth of windows and onto a throng gathered last Friday to watch the ribbons snipped on a new home for North Shore Community College.

Ribbons. College staff members strung not one, but 15 from the atrium floor to a second story walkway in the 106,000-square-foot building on Ferncroft Road. Just after 10 a.m., students and politicians alike took turns severing them with black-handled scissors.

“This (building) is, after all, the basis for our next group of students, the keepers of our democracy,” said U.S. Rep. John Tierney, D-Salem.

Top officials heaped credit upon state Senate Majority Leader Fred Berry, D-Peabody, for grabbing the state funding needed to build the $24.2 million facility that has replaced the building the college rented on Sohier Road in Beverly.

Thanks in large part to better accommodations at the new structure, designed by the DiMella Shaffer, total enrollment at NSCC has jumped more than 500 in one year to 6,612.

“Think of all those who will discover their potential in its classrooms,” said college President Wayne Burton.

They include Errol Burns, 28, or Gloucester, who was hampered in his attempt to get upstairs by the ceremony in the massive lobby.

“I was trying to get to my first class,” said the freshman liberal arts major, who loves the new building. “So it was a little frustrating.”