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The college plans to break ground on the facility at 8 a.m. on Wednesday. The center will be located at 900 Vine Arden Road. Officials say parking for the groundbreaking will be limited.

Bids on the project were opened recently and the project construction manager at risk, Vannoy Construction, is reviewing the bids and evaluating base bids and bids on potential alternate features, said Sandy Hoilman, vice president for administrative services and chief financial officer for WPCC. She said college officials will review and make decisions this coming week about which alternate features can be done.

The features that are part of the base project include a classroom building on the east side of Vine Arden Road and the training facility will be to the west, Hoilman said.

The training facility will include a control tower where the instructors can control the external training exercises and evaluate students, a burn building to allow students to work inside an internal building for different scenarios and an outdoor classroom shelter for training and breaks, Hoilman said. The burn building will be five floors with rooftop training, she said.

Burke County Fire Marshal Mike Willis, who also is the county’s emergency management director, said the multi-story burn building also will serve as a drill tower where emergency personnel can train for rappelling off of a tall building.

The five-story building will expand the training possibilities from the college’s single-story burn building at the current fire training center located on Coal Chute Road in Â鶹´«Ã½.

The classroom building will include offices, apparatus training, a decontamination area, showers, lockers and two bay areas, according to information from Hoilman. The training facility also will have a driving area, the information said.

Potential additions include a storage building, a partition in the classroom building, concrete and asphalt paving, gate and fencing, fans and a radio amplification system. Hoilman said of the alternate items, the priorities are the storage building, the entrance gate and classroom partition.

The budget for the facility is $18.2 million, which includes construction, design, bidding, construction administration and closeout services, Hoilman said. The actual construction of the facility will cost about $15.8 million, she said.

While the college doesn’t have the money for it now, plans at the training center include swiftwater training, which would include river access, a flooded village and a natural channel as well as urban channel for training, Hoilman said. The property sits near the Catawba River.

Hoilman said if the college is able to add swiftwater training in the future it will give the college a larger footprint in emergency response training across the state and beyond.

Willis said emergency personnel from other areas already come to Burke County for training and the demand for training is continuous.

“What the college started out with was a great start. This is a good opportunity to expand on that to make it bigger and better,� Willis said. “And it not only will serve local but it’ll serve regional and state training events as well.�

Willis said the college couldn’t expand facilities at the current location of the training center because it is in a flood plain and the ground wouldn’t be able to support a multi-story burn building.

Funding for the new training center comes from the state and grants. In 2021, the state budget allocated $15 million for the facility.

Hoilman said construction on the new facility is expected to start in October and take around 16 months to complete.