What was once a vacant industrial complex and might have been just another big-box shopping center is today a gleaming tribute to the state and Salem's commitment to public higher education.

The ribbon was cut last Wednesday on a new dormitory at Salem State College's Central Campus and there was plenty of reason to celebrate.

The first major piece of new construction on the former Sylvania Lighting site off Loring Avenue, the building increases Salem State's supply of on-campus housing by a third. The exterior is nothing fancy, but the rooms and other interior amenities are state-of-the-art.

Finished on time and on budget, the construction of the college's newest residential complex — the first to be built since 1990 — was the result of what SSC President Nancy Harrington termed a "seamless" process involving the city, legislators, the college, neighbors, architects and builders.

But both Congressman John Tierney and Mayor Stanley Usovicz gave much credit to Harrington herself, who during her long tenure has managed to erase many of the former town-gown tensions that existed between the college and the residents of South Salem.

Salem State now consists of three campuses — North (formerly Main), Central and South — and a fourth if one counts the parcel on Canal Street occupied by the O'Keefe Athletic Center. The newest — Central — is what links the other three pieces together.

Yet that campus, home to the School of Business, the innovative Enterprise Center, the campus police headquarters and now the new dorm, could well have become a barrier to the college's growth had it not been for the vision and energy of people like Harrington, state Rep. J. Michael Ruane and Sen. Frederick Berry.

After Sylvania announced it was moving its manufacturing activities from Salem to Pennsylvania, they moved quickly to acquire the site, realizing that it represented the school's last — indeed, only — opportunity for growth within the city. The sale was completed in 1997, and an immediate benefit was to give the school the additional parking it needed to get student cars off residential streets which had long been a bone of contention.

But their vision hardly stopped there, and the years since have seen both renovation and new construction, as well as the establishment of the business incubator known as the Enterprise Center which provides employment and learning opportunities for students and has generated tax revenue for the city to the tune of some $100,000 a year.

Local businessman David Ives, who attended the Horace Mann laboratory school and is now chairman of the Salem State College Assistance Corp., quoted from a book he's just read noting that "the essence of faith is hope in the unseen." And it certainly required a considerable leap of faith for Ives and his colleagues to invest in that site which some had asserted would best be paved over for commercial development.

This is a much better use of that property, binding even more tightly the 150-year-old ties between Salem and the region's largest public institution of higher education.