Higher education in Limestone gets more funding from legislative session

Published 1:58 pm Saturday, June 17, 2023

Two Athens-Limestone higher-education institutions will see funding from an appropriations bill that passed during the state legislative session this year.

“Limestone County, in my opinion, won big in the 2023 session,” Sen. Arthur Orr said.

Orr sponsored a FY23 supplemental appropriation that granted money to both Athens State University and Calhoun Community College.

“The good thing about that money is that it’s not budget money, where we’re waiting for Oct. 1 to kick in. That money comes now, because it’s fiscal ‘23 money,” he said. “Which is certainly a very good thing to have immediate access to that money, to bid the projects and get them going.”

More than $20 million will go to Calhoun and more than $7 million will go to Athens State. Both have projects specified in the bill that the money will go toward.

More than $3.5 million will go to the digital design and computer graphics/cyber workforce building renovation at Calhoun.

The largest portion of the funding for Calhoun, $9.5 million, will go to the Arts Academy.

“It honestly is an incredible gift for us,” department chair Kim Parker said. “A lot of the outreach that we do is to the area high school students.”

She said with this extra funding they can create spaces for them to take supplemental courses. She said that they will be able to create more opportunities for the students that the high schools don’t necessarily have.

Seven million dollars of Calhoun’s funding will go toward the Workforce Training Center expansion. That is a $30 million expansion that Calhoun already has $23 million in funding for Orr said. He explained that will be added on the east side of the campus off of the Advanced Training Center that is there now.

“It’d be a huge new addition to the Tanner campus of Calhoun,” he said.

Just around the corner from Calhoun, he said more plans are in the works for an electric vehicle maintenance and training center at the Alabama Industrial Development Training Robotics Technology Park as well. There was $30 million invested in that center in the FY23 appropriation bill, bringing a total of $60 million in development to that Tanner area of Limestone County Orr pointed out.

“The mission will be to train workers how to deal with fuel cells, batteries, etcetera in automobiles and other applications,” he said. “With the Mazda Toyota plant being such a part of the Limestone economy there at Greenbrier, they’re going to be moving into some electric vehicle production in the years ahead, and so we as a state want to have that facility ready not only for Mazda Toyota but for offering that instruction and training for the rest of the state.”

At Athens State, the largest portion of funding, $4 million, will go towards Brown Hall.

“Brown Hall, which has sat vacant and dormant for years and years and nothing has happened to it because we haven’t had the funding to bring it up to where it needs to be for occupancy,” he said.

He said this is a good move for the university to be able to use the building once again, because they are looking at expanding course work in the health sciences field.

“So the goal would be to use Brown Hall for expanded scope and additional course offerings, degree offerings at Athens State,” he said.

Another $1 million will be used for the Hightower-Nazaretian House, which Orr said he has been calling the “tyvek house.”

“It’s had that tyvek plastic wrap around it for almost two years now, maybe longer,” he said. “We’ve not had the money at Athens State to repair that building.”

Orr serves as chair on the Athens State Board of Trustees. He said the plan for the building now is to have it be a sort of alumni or welcome center.

“That one million dollars will address that issue and bring that Nazaretian House right there at the gateway of the campus up to standards and be something good certainly for the college,” he said.

Just more than $2.3 million will be used for deferred maintenance, renovation of existing facilities, or expenses associated with ongoing capital projects at Athens State.

This story was updated as of June 19, 2023.