The surging enrollment at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte has created expansion needs. CPCC has had a 35 percent growth in full-time students from 2005 to 2012. According to an article about CPCC’s growth needs on the Charlotte Observer’s website, North Carolina community colleges are required to provide 100 square feet of instructional space for every full-time student and CPCC averages just 58 square feet per student over its six campuses.
The Observer article quoted CPCC President Tony Zeiss saying “We’ve grown so rapidly and have fallen so far behind in space that, in many instances, we’ve had to turn people away,” he said. “This community faces the same skills gap that the rest of America faces. We have the ability to train people, but we need the labs and space to do it.
To meet requirements and to plan for the future, the school has identified 20 projects that will add space with a total cost of $430 million. CPCC is likely to request Mecklenburg County commissioners to grant a bond referendum that will fund a three year plan for CPCC’s top 10 projects. Lland acquisitions at five CPCC campuses and five construction projects will provide the classroom and lab space to train students for mostly health sciences, energy and information technology jobs. “The college needs new and renovated classrooms, labs and support space to meet Mecklenburg’s educational and training needs and prepare workers for jobs,” the article quoted Zeiss.
We’re proud to be a part of the growth in Mecklenburg County and the Carolinas.
Similarly, due to growth, A&K Painting Company had a demand for expanded training and operations space. To better serve our customers, last year we made the decision to invest in our training and operations capacity and created the OTS, our Operations Training Showroom. The state-of-the-art training facility combined with a new showroom and operations facility establishes A&K as the leading commercial painting contractor.