Regional News
Email
Print
Golden Leaf grants to help with Surry job training
Money will help to build center, hire employees; other grants aid utilities
ADVERTISEMENT
Published: June 6, 2009
Updated: 06/05/2009 11:55 pm
Elkin officials will use a $200,000 grant that they received recently from the Golden Leaf Foundation for a Workforce Development Center to help reduce the unemployment rate in Surry County.
The grant was among $2.06 million in grant money that the foundation awarded for projects in Surry County.
The foundation presented checks for the projects to local and county officials at a ceremony in Pilot Mountain.
The town will use two vacant buildings on North Bridge Street for the center, Town Manager John Holcomb said.
One of those buildings will be renovated.
The center, which will be a satellite campus of Surry Community College, will offer job training, a GED program, English as a second language program and medical training for nursing students, Holcomb said.
The town plans to open the center by March 30.
Holcomb said he hopes that some of the 4,512 unemployed people in Surry County will take training classes at the center.
In April, the county had an unemployment rate of 12.9 percent, one of the highest rates of joblessness in North Carolina.
The money that Elkin received is part of a $718,613 grant that the town of Pilot Mountain received to establish a similar job-training center, which also will be a satellite campus of the college.
Town Manager Blair Knox of Pilot Mountain said that the town and the county have bought a 70,000-square-foot building that will be used for its center. The town will use its share of the grant to renovate the building.
The town hopes to open the center by Jan. 1 with 1,200 students enrolled in its programs, Knox said.
Surry Community College in Dobson received $800,000 to help furnish and equip the job-training centers in Elkin and Pilot Mountain and to hire four employees within two years, said Deborah Friedman, the college's president.
The employees will work with underemployed and unemployed people to help them find jobs.
Other projects receiving money include:
■ $150,000 to Surry County for the construction of a water line from Tobe Hudson Road to Bottomley Evergreens & Farms on Oak Grove Church Road.
The project will provide public water to the agribusiness farm that employs 21 workers and 47 other existing businesses. That measure could create 50 new jobs, the foundation said.
■ $200,000 to Surry County to support its efforts to install a water line and sewer force main from Elkin's existing water and sewer systems to the proposed site of Fibrowatt, a company that will generate electricity by burning chicken waste, the foundation said.
The company has said that it will invest more than $140 million and create 35 jobs.
■ The city of Mount Airy will receive $86,000 to design a planned sewer-force main that will connect the city's waste-water treatment system to a pump station located at the interchanges of Interstate 77, Interstate 74 and N.C. 89.
The sewer service will allow businesses to expand and create jobs, the foundation said.
■ The city of Mount Airy also will receive $110,000 for the city and the town of Pilot Mountain to work together to sell and deliver water service to new customers.
The money that the towns, the county and college received is part of the foundation's Community Assistance Initiative that helps counties with projects designed to stimulate their economies.
"We are very fortunate that the Golden Leaf Foundation came to Surry County," Holcomb said.
■ John Hinton can be reached at 727-7299 or at jhinton@wsjournal.com.
Email
Print
