Ground was broken today on a new $25.6 million Allied Health & Nursing Building at the downtown campus of the Jefferson Community & Technical College. College President Dr. Anthony Newberry greeted the crowd, “We are here to celebrate [the end of] a more than 30 year drought in new construction” on the downtown campus at 2nd Street and Broadway. In fact, the last groundbreaking occurred in 1977 with the expansion of the school’s library.

Much of the talk of the day surrounded the importance of skilled healthcare jobs that cannot be exported overseas. Congressman John Yarmouth hailed the project as “an investment in jobs… that will be here for years to come.” Bruce Traughber stood in for Mayor Jerry Abramson who was ironically meeting at the time with GE officials about the impending sale of Appliance Park. “We’re not going to get a call from JCTC saying, ‘Hey, we’re moving!‘” Traughber said.

Dr. Carolyn O’Daniel, Dean of JCTC Nursing & Allied Health was happy the new building will bring together nursing programs scattered across the county and at Norton Hospital into one state-of-the-art facility. She noted the programs will benefit from proximity to the neighboring Medical Center. The college currently offers 15 Allied Health & Nursing programs and has 3,000 students a year enrolled or pending enrollment in such a discipline. The new 100,000 square foot structure will house classrooms, laboratories, faculty offices, and study space and be open in the Fall of 2010. The building was designed by Arrasmith, Judd, Rapp, Chovan architects of Louisville.