Opportunity will be knocking on the door of North St. Louis residents next year when a new education and jobs training center opens, operated by St. Louis Community College – Forest Park.
The William J. Harrison Education Center, formerly housed at 4666 Natural Bridge Rd. at the site of the former Julia Davis Branch Library, will break ground Friday, June 12 at a new and larger space.
The center’s new address is 3140 Cass Ave., near North Jefferson Avenue and only two blocks from Vashon High School. The nearness to Vashon has animated St. Louis Community College Chancellor Zelema Harris to make this move a high priority.
The center is expected to serve as a bridge to higher education at the Forest Park campus and provide job training opportunities for individuals in North St. Louis city and some parts of North St. Louis County.
“This new Harrison Center will provide bridges to new opportunities to improve the quality of life for citizens in a very challenged, yet growing neighborhood,” Harris said.
Nearby resident Sharon Williams Rayford readily understands why the vicinity to Vashon drove Harris forward with this project.
“There are so many young people here who take advantage of the center, plus Vashon is just two blocks away,” Williams-Rayford said.
“They have a place where they can actually get college credit.”
The new facility will concentrate on four areas of instruction: computer technology, allied health, environmental sciences, and workforce training and development.
The building will also house general classrooms featuring state-of-the-art audio-visual equipment along with an art studio, science and computer labs, multi-purpose community room, bookstore, commons area, outreach center and administrative offices.
Williams-Rayford, who works at the Julia Davis Library and at the West End Community Center, called the center an asset, especially to the immediate area, which has new low-income housing, such as O’Fallon Place, Bristle and Murphy Park.
“This is a big step for North St. Louis and surrounding city areas, especially with the threat of the closing of the West End Community Center,” Williams Rayford said.
“Putting it here makes the neighborhood more viable for black people still living in the city to take advantage of opportunities in the city without going to the county to get community services.”
The Harrison Education Center partners with more than 100 community and education organizations, including Grace Hill Neighborhood Services, Mother’s Way Career Counseling and Employment Connections.
In addition to Vashon, the center is also in close proximity to Clyde C. Miller Academy, another high school in the St. Louis Public Schools district.
“If they collaborate with the high schools – like preparing them for the ACT – that would be great,” said Allison Pittman, second-year trail ranger for AmeriCorp, a community organizing organization.
“A college campus can be intimidating, especially for students who just barely made it out of high school, so this is a good buffer and it will bring up the income level and higher expectations.”
Pittman said that people are their environment and when their environment gets better, they get better.
The center, she said, is also in line with what relatively new Grace Hill CEO Roderick Jones emphasizes.
“This couldn’t come at a better time, because this is exactly what Grace Hill’s CEO says we need: education for parents in the community.”
Also, the former facility was small, limiting its capacity to serve the more than 6,000 city residents who use the center annually. Many have had to commute to off-site locations due to space constraints.
The new center will cover 30,265-square feet and will cost an estimated $10.5 million to build. In keeping with President Barack Obama’s green advocacy, it will be designed and built to achieve a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) gold certification, as designated by the U.S. Green Building Council.
Environmentally friendly elements include energy-efficient heating and cooling systems, use of recyclable materials in construction, and indoor chemical and pollutant source control.
KAI Design & Build is the architectural firm, and Kwame Building Group is construction manager and owner’s representative of the facility. Both are Minority-owned Business Enterprises based in St. Louis.