Santa Rosa Junior College, Santa Rosa, Calif., and the Sonoma County Economic Development Board recently announced a $7.12 million federal grant has been secured to build a training center dedicated to the construction trades, according to www.petaluma360.com.
The North Bay Regional Construction and Building Trades Employment Training Center is projected to train hundreds of construction and trades workers annually to help support ongoing recovery and rebuild efforts in the wake of the October 2017 wildfires. The 10,000-square-foot structure will be built on Santa Rosa Junior College’s 40-acre Petaluma campus.
The $7.12 million grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration disaster relief funds will be matched by a $1 million grant from the San Francisco-based Tipping Point Community Foundation. Santa Rosa Junior College will contribute $780,000 in land for the center, which is scheduled to be completed in two years.
The new training center will allow the college to offer a wide selection of new courses. The program will offer short-term training in various specialties for certificates, as well as a program that will take one to four semesters to complete. An associate degree program for students in trade union apprenticeships is being developed.
The construction training center is the latest effort to address the area’s skilled labor shortage after some of the deadliest wildfires in California’s history destroyed more than 5,300 Sonoma County homes in October 2017. A housing impact study by Beacon Economics identified the need to build 30,000 more housing units to account for local fire losses, overcrowding and employment growth.
