Print

Email story

Comment

Letter to the editor

Work pays off on Job Corps campus

Finally, after nearly 10 years, officials will break ground in Midtown.

By Cristina Silva, Times Staff Writer
Published February 20, 2008

St. PETERSBURG - Nearly 10 years after efforts to bring a U.S. Department of Labor Job Corps campus to Pinellas County began, local community leaders will finally celebrate the groundbreaking of the facility Thursday.

The campus, long hailed as a key component in the revitalization of St. Petersburg's Midtown area, is expected to serve about 600 students a year.

"It's going to be an educational addition that is unparalleled," said Pinellas County Commission Chairman Robert Stewart. "It will definitely be a major contributor to the economy in the sense of providing young people with opportunities and getting them employed."

Job Corps is the nation's oldest federally funded job training and education program for people ages 16 through 24.

The St. Petersburg campus will include eight buildings with classrooms, vocational work space, administrative offices, dormitories for 300 students, a cafeteria and a recreation center.

Programs will include high school diplomas, GED diplomas, college credit and job skill training in automotive, technology, nursing, hospitality and the building trades.

In many ways, the groundbreaking will mark the end of a decadelong headache for many local officials.

For six years, county and city officials struggled to find a place to build the campus. The money nearly fell through once and then again.

Stewart began working to bring Job Corps to Pinellas in 1999, when a friend called and told him the Department of Labor was thinking about adding money to expand Job Corps.

"We had no idea what we were starting," he recalled Tuesday. "Certainly, if it had been unveiled to us at the get-go that it would be this lengthy and this difficult, I am not sure we would have been able to sustain the enthusiasm."

St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker traveled to Job Corps' largest Florida campus in Jacksonville shortly after he was elected in 2001. Impressed, he began efforts to bring the site to St. Petersburg.

In 2003, Pinellas beat out two dozen metropolitan markets for the money. The federal Department of Labor awarded a $24-million grant for the program.

The only problem was the Department of Labor didn't approve Pinellas' choice for a location: the P-Tech vocational school across from Gibbs High School.

Then the county suggested land that included St. Petersburg College's former administrative headquarters in Pinellas Park. But a few more acres were needed from an elderly woman living nearby. She died during the negotiations.

Stewart fretted. The longer the $24-million grant sat unused, the more likely it would be redirected to other priorities. Plagued with stress-induced stomach cramps, Stewart took to swallowing handfuls of Mylanta tablets to get through the night.

Finally, federal officials agreed to build the Job Corps site at the Dome Industrial Park in St. Petersburg in 2005.

Baker was thrilled.

The city-owned stretch of land was "the worst urban site in the city," he said.

Federal bureaucracy further delayed groundbreaking on the campus, which originally was scheduled to open by the end of this year. Now, the school's opening date has been pushed back to late 2009.

Better late than never, said Goliath Davis, the city's deputy mayor of Midtown.

"It is going to be a beautiful campus," he said. "That whole area is going to be completely revitalized."

Cristina Silva can be reached at 727 893-8846 or csilva@sptimes.com.

[Last modified February 19, 2008, 23:09:35]