A groundbreaking ceremony was held Tuesday afternoon for the new NIACC Franklin County Career Center, which will be constructed along Olive Avenue next to the Hampton Municipal Airport.
A 3-million dollar grant from the Federal Economic Development Administration will help to pay for the project.
NIACC President Joel Pedersen tells RadioOnTheGo News about the facility, and how its focus will be on three main areas.
“This project is going to be similar to what we have in Forest City and also in Charles City Career Center. Students from Belmond-Klemme, Hampton-Dumont, and also West Fork will be able to come here and take classes, receive college credit at no cost to them. They could leave with 20 credits, transfer to to NIAC or transfer somewhere else, or perhaps quite honestly go right to the workforce. So I think this is a unique spot because of the industrial park. So we’re going to have some really awesome opportunities for us to do some apprenticeships. So it’s just going to be a state of the art building that also will allow Mary to have a great space with economic development and the community to use when they have meetings or you know maybe there’s an employer that wants to come in and meet and we could say hey we have a training center here that can be used to your employees so I think it’s just a win-win for our region and a win-win for this area. The main three we’re gonna start with is health occupations getting students to kind of see what part of the health field they want to go into advanced manufacturing which could be welding it could be HVAC it could be you know any type of thing in that area and then also business.”
The NIACC Franklin County Career Center will open to students in the fall of 2026.
