ARC Grant Moves Forward Higher Education Center Expansion

The Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center is ready to move forward with construction of a 6,200-square-foot addition thanks to a $450,000 grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission.

Education Center Executive Director Rachel Fowlkes said the project will add two classrooms, a bathroom and a long breakout space to the center’s grand hall.

"We need the space desperately," she said, adding Education Center staff have spent the past two years raising money for the project. "The Higher Education Center right now is busting at the seams."

Fowlkes said the project has a total cost of $3.2 million, and money for construction has already come from the Virginia Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission and state government.

With the addition of the ARC grant money, the plan is to put the expansion project out for bid next month.

The Appalachian Regional Commission – a joint partnership between federal and state governments designed to help communities in the Appalachian region – on Thursday doled out more than $3.5 million in grants to 12 Southwest Virginia programs, including the Education Center located on the Virginia Highlands Community College campus in Abingdon, Va.

Another Abingdon project in the works, the Southwest Virginia Artisan Center, received a $1 million grant from ARC, which its director, Rob Jones, said would help toward the overall fundraising goal of $16 million.

Here is a list of the other grant announcements and the projects they will benefit:

• $500,000 to a multi-community water project in Dickenson County.
• $450,000 to the Scott County Economic Development Authority’s Duffield Regional Training Center Project.
• $435,840 to the Fries redevelopment project.
• $325,272 to the Carroll, Grayson and Galax Industrial Facilities Authority’s regional communications network.
• $109,851 to Pennington Gap’s Lee Theater and Learning Center renovations.
• $100,000 to a welding and pipe-fitting program at the Mountain Empire Community College.
• $100,000 to Dickenson County’s Dickenson Center for Education.
• $100,000 to King College’s Buchanan County satellite project.

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