New PVCC job center may not open in fall

Piedmont Virginia Community College’s plan to open a job training center continues to face delays, leading to fears among college officials that the facility might not be ready to open for classes this fall.

The college is awaiting the approval of various state agencies before it moves forward with plans to convert the former Monticello visitors center into a workforce development center.

“My understanding is, now, that we’ll get the keys to the building sometime in the next couple of weeks,” said Bill Jackameit, PVCC’s vice president for finance and administrative services. “All you can do to hurry it up is make a nuisance of yourself. We have done that. We’re harassing them as much as we can.”

Piedmont officials had expected that the project would get the green light from the state at some point between April 15 and May 1, making the project now two or two-and-a-half months behind schedule.

For college officials, the project carries a certain amount of urgency because the facility’s goal is to greatly expand PVCC’s offerings to help out-of-work or underemployed residents learn marketable skills to help them find jobs in such high-demand fields as health care and information technology.

The Charlottesville region has seen its unemployment rate more than double over the last year. As of April, the region’s jobless rate was 5.5 percent, up from 2.5 percent in April of 2008. Charlottesville-area employers lost some 2,600 jobs during that same period, with the biggest losses posted in the construction industry, followed by the hospitality and trade/transportation sectors, according to the Virginia Employment Com-mission.

Valerie Palamountain, PVCC’s dean of workforce services, said the college had hoped to begin offering classes in the facility in the fall, but the unanticipated delays may mean that classes won’t get under way in the building until spring 2010.

Piedmont already offers a long list of workforce development classes, but needs more space before it can increase its course offerings and take on more students, Palamountain said.

“We’re constrained by space,” she said. “By expanding, we’ll be able to offer more classes to more students.”

Palamountain’s office is designing entry-level courses to help people find jobs in the emerging clean energy market. Other courses include CPR training, construction, computer skills, viticulture, customer service, leadership skills and more.

Businesses such as Sperry Marine and SNL Financial have contracted with the college to provide training to employees. The governments of Charlottesville and Albemarle County have also hired PVCC to upgrade the skills of their workers, college officials said.

Once Piedmont has the state’s approval to move into the facility, the college will undertake a $500,000 refurbishment of the building. Workers will paint the interior, replace carpeting, clean the building’s exterior, make Americans with Disabilities Act modifications, install lights in the parking lot and add security cameras. The college will also overhaul the building’s interior layout, moving a few walls to create classroom space.

The college’s workforce services employees are now scheduled to move their offices into the facility in October, said PVCC spokeswoman Anita Showers.

Once finished, the workforce development center will have five classrooms and a conference room for corporate training. It will also feature a computer lab and a nursing assistant lab, complete with hospital beds and medical training equipment.

Down the road, Jackameit said, PVCC aims to double the facility’s size from 10,000 to 20,000 square feet. The project, he said, is expected to be considered by the General Assembly early next year.

Jackameit and other Piedmont officials said they do not believe the project is in jeopardy, merely that it is taking a bit longer than they had hoped.