MTC breaks ground on new technology center

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Midlands Technical College broke ground on a $30 million, 58,000-square-foot technology center at its Beltline campus today.

The four-story, 58,245-square-foot Center for Business and Information Technologies will serve as a high-tech hub for the college’s business, information technology, science and mathematics workforce development programs.

“The physical transformation of our campus is representative of what we do every day: We help people transform their tomorrow,” MTC President Ronald Rhames said in an online statement.

Rhames said that of MTC’s 150 programs of study, nearly 50 are in the fields the new center is designed to support, with many of those featuring training programs offered through the college’s Corporate and Continuing Education division.

“Businesses, organizations and state government agencies rely on these programs and other corporate and continuing education offerings for workforce development,” he said. “It will be a job-training hub supporting Lexington, Richland and Fairfield counties and represents a $30 million capital investment.”

Boudreaux Group is the project architect, while Hood Construction is the contractor.

The center will replace the Lindau Engineering Technology building, which was used in April for firefighter training. Construction will begin later this month, with the center slated to open in August 2023, according to a news release from MTC.

Midlands Tech, the state’s third-largest technical school with 8,800 students, also recently built a $4.5 million industrial technology facility at its Airport campus. A ribbon-cutting ceremony is scheduled for August.

The college’s CCE division features QuickJobs, career-training programs developed for jobs where workers are anticipated to be in high demand during the next decade. The 40-plus programs take just a few months to complete, Rhames said, and 260 students received QuickJobs scholarships in the last fiscal year.