A groundbreaking ceremony took place Friday at the University of Arkansas Community College at Morrilton for the Workforce Training Center, the biggest construction project in the school’s 53-year history.
The $13 million, 53,000-square-foot building is scheduled to be completed in December 2017 and used for spring classes in 2018, said Linda Birkner, the college’s vice chancellor for administration.
“This has been on the drawing board a long time, and it’s finally coming to fruition,” she said.
The facility will house automotive-service technology; heating, air-conditioning and refrigeration technology; welding technology; and industrial mechanics and maintenance and technology labs, as well as a space for specialized workforce training and the workforce development office.
“Those are the programs that have high-demand, high-wage jobs, and we need to put out more graduates; it came to the point where we said this has got to be our commitment,” Birkner said.
“All the programs are built with an advisory committee of major industry people who tell us what they need,” Birkner said. The new facility will give UACCM a platform to provide that training and expand programs, she said.
For example, commercial refrigeration will expand extensively in the new space, Birkner said.
“Most of the training for commercial refrigeration is done out of state. A lot of businesses are sending their employees to Kansas City for training,” she said.
Birkner said the Workforce Training Center’s significance cannot be overstated.
“Every year, heating-and-air technicians have jobs when they graduate,” she said. “It’s so wonderful to see that, but to know there are so many more jobs unfilled, that’s the real clincher.”
Conway County Judge Jimmy Hart, the keynote speaker at the groundbreaking, agreed with Birkner.
“When it comes to skills- and trade-based training, it’s going to be an answer to a lot of dreams and industry needs across the central-Arkansas area,” Hart said.
He said the college meets the needs of students not just in Conway County — 47 percent of the enrollment comes from Faulkner County.
Hart said what UACCM offers is the ability to ask existing industries or those looking to locate in central Arkansas, ‘Tell us what you need — what kind of skill set do you need?’” and provide the training.
“People in Conway County believe in it and support it,” he said of the college. Hart pointed to the permanent one-fourth-cent sales tax that residents approved in 2000 to support what was then Petit Jean College and “significantly supports” the campus today.
All the technology buildings on campus were built between 1963 and 1972, Birkner said.
“We’ve known for years we’ve needed new technology space,” she said. Of the 38 programs offered, 33 are vocational or technical in scope.
The Technology 1 building, which houses welding and auto mechanics, will be razed after the new facility opens.
“The building just really needs to go away; it’s not worth saving. It’s the one building that will be torn down in the master plan,” Birkner said.
Renovations will begin this summer on the Technology II and Technology III buildings. The Technology II building houses the HVAC program and petroleum technology, which is being put on inactive status because of the downturn in natural-gas drilling in the Fayetteville Shale, said Mary Clark, chief information officer for the college.
Clark said the Technology III building, which houses the automotive collision-repair program, needs more lab space. Classrooms will be taken out of that building to expand the lab. A classroom for the automotive-collision-degree students will be added to the Technology II building in the lab space previously used by the petroleum-technology program.
“We hope to have the renovation done by fall so the auto-collision students can start using the new classroom and have access to the larger labs,” Clark said.
The Workforce Training Center is being funded through the UACCM Foundation’s Give Meaning Campaign, which has raised $2.5 million to date, including grants and private donations, said Morgan Zimmerman, chief development officer.
UACCM received a $1.2 million Economic Development Administration grant for site work, which is estimated to cost $2 million.
Zimmerman said the project was scaled back to stay on budget. Originally, it was a 58,000-square-foot project.
“The instructional space is still what it needs to be — we’ve taken out high ceilings, things like that,” Zimmerman said.
Birkner said a separate building for a diesel program was deleted from the project months ago to cut costs.
“Eventually, we hope to add diesel as a program,” she said.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.