OTC eyes fall groundbreaking for $60M campus addition

As Ozarks Technical Community College has one multimillion-dollar construction project in full swing, another is expected to break ground this fall that will provide workforce training along with study and leisure spaces for students.

OTC officials estimate The Center for Workforce and Student Success will cost roughly $60 million, with bids to be solicited for the project this summer. The three-story, 100,000-square-foot building on the Springfield campus will be built on the corner of West Chestnut Expressway and North Sherman Avenue.

“We’d like to have a groundbreaking – assuming that everything goes well – in September, and then it would open in fall of 2026,” said Hal Higdon, OTC chancellor.

Higdon said the facility is expected to be the second-largest structure constructed on campus behind the Robert W. Plaster Center for Advanced Manufacturing. Crossland Construction Co. Inc. served as general contractor for the 120,000-square-foot manufacturing center designed by Dake Wells Architecture Inc. and its national partner, Minneapolis-based Perkins & Will Inc., according to past Springfield Business Journal reporting.

The Center for Workforce and Student Success will bring together numerous offerings provided elsewhere on campus, such as the college library, workforce training rooms, food service options and exercise facilities. Higdon said OTC, which was founded in 1990, put a lot of focus on classroom and lab facilities in its early years.

“We’re a young college, so we’re still in expansion mode,” he said. “Now we’re trying to round out our campus here with more student support services and workforce development training. One of the things that we are short on is study space and gathering space.”

Space considerations
The center’s first floor will comprise food service options, including a Starbucks, a gathering space for students and an Eagle Store, a college-branded retail shop. Additional student gathering and study spaces, along with a fitness center, will fill much of the second story. A new library with tutoring and learning labs will make up the top floor, as well as workforce training spaces.

“It’s actually a space that can be divided into three rooms,” Higdon said, adding companies can utilize the multifunctional rooms as their employees may also be OTC students looking to skill up. “When we do workforce training, it could be something like (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) training. It could also be training in a short-term program, such as drafting and designing.”

The center is set to receive $46 million in state funding for higher education capital improvement projects. The state legislature approved the funding as part of the $51.7 billion budget passed May 10. Gov. Mike Parson still has to sign the budget, but he also included the funding in his list of budget priorities he presented to lawmakers in January.

The remainder of the project will be funded through OTC’s capital reserve fund, Higdon said.

“We have more than enough in our reserves to fund capital, but we also are looking at private contributions,” he said, adding that includes naming rights for the building and other interior spaces.

Students needs
OTC spokesperson Mark Miller, who is set to begin in June as the new executive director of nonprofit Lost & Found Grief Center, said the center is partly a response to desires from students. When Miller began working at the college in 2014, the average student age was around the mid-20s. But coming out of the Great Recession a few years prior, he said more people were goingback to work, which largely emptied out OTC’s older students over 25 years old.

“We still have them, obviously, but just not the crush of people we had on the heels of the recession,” he said, adding the average student age is now closer to 20. “When you’re talking an average age of 19-20, they want a more traditional college experience.”

The younger students want gathering spaces in which to study or socialize, Miller said, adding exercise options also are needed for those wanting to fit in a workout between classes.

“We still have the 28-, 38- and 48-year-olds. But we have to be more than just [a place to] come to class and leave,” Higdon said. “They need to study; they need a library. Tutoring and learning services are much more needed today than they were 10, 20 years ago. Students come to us with greater need.”

The center will replace an existing parking lot on campus, but OTC isn’t expecting to lose any parking spaces. That’s because it currently is constructing a new parking lot at Pythian Street and Hampton Avenue.

“We’re picking up right around 200 spots, so it’s about a one for one tradeoff,” Miller said.

Higdon said he doesn’t anticipate a notable increase in new hires for the center. Most of the third floor will be staffed by academic affairs personnel, student affairs will utilize the second floor and much of the first floor will come under administrative services.

“So, there will be no one person in charge of it,” he said. “It’ll mainly be relocating current personnel.”

The center’s planned start of construction will come roughly a year after OTC broke ground on a $13.2 million aviation maintenance training center at the old Springfield-Branson National Airport terminal on West Kearney Street.

The two-story, 29,065-square-foot building is being constructed to serve its airframe and powerplant program debuting in 2025, according to past reporting. Killian Construction Co. is general contractor for the facility designed by nForm Architecture LLC.