JSCC close to finalizing plans for workforce development center

In 2022, Jackson State Community College received word that Gov. Bill Lee ensured money had been earmarked in the state budget for a workforce development center on JSCC’s campus.

The center had long been a dream for the campus community at Jackson State along with local leaders like Ed Jackson and former State Representative Jimmy Eldridge before passing it on to his successor, Chris Todd.

Former Mayors Jerry Gist (Jackson) and Jimmy Harris (Madison County) were involved in trying to convince the state’s executives of how beneficial the center could be to Jackson and surrounding areas before they passed their own batons to Scott Conger and A.J. Massey, respectively.

Carol Rothstein, the president of Jackson State for nearly a year, inherited the project in the early stages.

“When I got here, the conversation was about how we have the funding for the center, so how do we utilize that for the greatest good for us and everyone else involved,” Rothstein said.

That conversation has happened over the past several months.  It involved different stakeholders in the center including TCAT Jackson leadership, industry partners and others in the community.

Rothstein hopes the school will receive word from the Tennessee Board of Regents for approval for the final plans they have for the center.

Once they have that approval, a ceremonial groundbreaking would be expected later this year in the fall with actual work beginning on the building in January.

If all of that falls into place, the hope would be classes could begin in the building in the fall of 2026.

Rothstein and her team landed on the location for the center being on the corner of campus in front of the McWherter Center at the corner of F.E. Wright Drive and North Parkway.

“We want to really transform that entrance to our campus with a more modern look and feel, and this would fulfill that role,” Rothstein said. “Because we’ve built a number of new buildings on campus in the last few years that have a modern look, switching bricks and metal paneling, and this building will continue that trend.”

The center will have an “L” shape to it as it wraps around the McWherter Center at the intersection. The current entrance to campus off F.E. Wright Drive will still exist, but there will be more parking on the end of the building closer to the street.

The first section of the building from that parking lot will be a lobby-type area that can also be a gathering space, but to the left from that lobby will be a planned gathering space that will have room for about 200 people seated at tables.

To the right of that lobby will be the offices for the faculty in the building, where they will have a closed conference room but an open lounge area to foster a collaborative work environment.

“While the conference room will be separate, it will be surrounded by windows so it will be closed off but not totally,” Rothstein said. “They definitely need a space for group discussion among the faculty members that maybe doesn’t need to be heard by anyone not in the meeting, but enclosing it in windows instead of walls gives it a much more open look.”

From the event space will be a hallway with windows looking out toward a courtyard that will be the space between the center and the McWherter Center. Patio furniture and other outdoor types of furniture will provide an area for students and faculty to study, read, converse or have lunch if they want. The hope is also to have some greenspace out there too once they figure out what plants would thrive in that environment in which sunlight gets there during certain times of the day.

On the other side of the hall from the windows and courtyard will be classrooms and labs. These rooms will offer Workforce Solutions credit and non-credit classes, along with general education courses offered by the college as part of the college’s certificate and degree programs. The college’s Engineering Systems Technology Program and Advanced Maintenance Technician Co-Op will have one of the larger sections of this area, offering more space for this program to expand with industry demand.

The plan is for smaller hallways to surround the rooms to provide students natural places to congregate or study between classes with plenty of sunlight and seating that will make either activity almost natural in that area.

The part of the building bordering North Parkway will be the large bay areas in which local industries will be able to house their equipment to do their own training if they choose to do so.

“We almost have smaller versions of these already in the McWherter Center, and Georgia-Pacific takes advantage of one of those spaces now,” Rothstein said. “But these areas will be considerably larger.”

One aspect about the building is the ease of moving things around. If anyone brings heavy equipment – or a caterer or other vendor has a lot of equipment for the events center – there are large roll-up doors in every room starting with the loading docks on North Parkway at the edge of the third large bay area through the bays, into the classrooms to the events center to make it easier to move things in and out of the building.

The building will be one floor, but the bays will have a noticeably taller roof. The building as a whole will be 60,000 square feet and cost a total of $34.5 million to build.

“Everyone I’ve talked to with the state likes our plans, so we expect approval soon,” Rothstein said. “Then once that happens, the rest of the plan to get construction started will happen pretty quickly after that.”

Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news