MARSHFIELD, WI (OnFocus) – At Tuesday’s Marshfield Common Council meeting, Dr. Shelly Mondeik, President of Mid-State Technical College, presented a plan for the college’s newest addition to their Stevens Point Campus.
The addition of an advanced manufacturing, engineering technology and apprenticeship center (AMETA) has been designed in hopes of drawing more workers to central Wisconsin and keeping them here.
Marshfield Development Services Director Josh Miller introduced the presentation and said the project will hopefully help with staffing shortages in the area.
“We know that workforce is desperate need in the area and all throughout the country,” Miller said. “MSTC has been at the forefront of training future employees in this area. This is an exciting project and we thought this would be a good opportunity to bring this forward to the council and to the public.”
Mondeik gave a presentation to the council outlining the addition and what it means for the community. Mondeik said a major problem with the central Wisconsin job market was that employees in a certain field were having to go out of the area for training for a specific job and a lot of times, they stayed where they went for that training.
MSTC’s solution to this problem is to build the AMETA training center where additional programming for manufacturing careers will take place.
“We really need to serve the number one industry across our eight counties, and that’s manufacturing,” Mondeik said. “We need to do that at all of our local campuses along with trying to put more of the advanced training under one roof.”
Mondeik said it made sense to centralize this training facility so they decided upon Stevens Point as the best spot. The expansion will also allow for more advancement in the fabrication and welding programs at the Marshfield location according to Mondeik.
The original building cost was set to be $9 million but with increased construction costs, that number has grown to $11 million. Mondeik was proud to share that MSTC has already raised $10 million for the project.
The funding for the project has come from MSTC itself ($1.5 million), local businesses ($4.2 million), the state ($4.0 million) and MSTC would like the City of Stevens Point and Portage County to contribute $1.3 million to the cause.
MSTC is seeking approval on the project by April of 2022 and would like to “put a shovel in the ground” by fall of 2022.
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