Starke County’s workforce development efforts have gotten a $2.8 million boost from the federal government. The SCILL Center has been awarded a grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration to build a 12,000-square-foot workforce training center. It would house SCILL’s welding and robotics programs.
Ron Gifford is the president of the SCILL Center’s board and, until recently, served as its director. “It potentially means that at least the two programs that are currently lodged in the middle school could eventually move into a new facility, obviously much larger than what either enjoys right now,” he says, “and also, there would probably be some additional space within the building for some unknown SCILL-sponsored program that might come up in the future.”
The facility would be built in the Knox Industrial Park on land already owned by the Starke County Economic Development Foundation. Gifford says that federal pandemic relief allowed the Economic Development Administration to offer grants with a smaller local match. That means the share from SCILL and the Starke County Economic Development Foundation could be less than $700,000.
But SCILL officials still have to decide whether to move ahead with the project. Gifford notes they applied for the grant before they learned the Knox Community School Corporation was planning its own vocational wing at the high school. Meanwhile, construction costs keep going up.
“We haven’t seen the particulars of the award or anything like that,” Gifford says. “So we have to look at all that and the board of SCILL would have to decide whether or not they go forward with that or go with the vocational wing for the high school.”
So far, the Knox School Board has agreed to seek bids for the vocational wing but hasn’t given final approval.
