A brighter future ahead for Central Carolina: College holds groundbreaking ceremony for new Academic Student Services Building

BY BRUCE MILLS 
bruce@theitem.com

The sunshine on Monday afternoon in Sumter was symbolic of the festivities at Central Carolina Technical College as officials broke ground on a new, three-story building that will modernize the main campus.

College leaders, faculty, staff, students, Sumter County council members and state Speaker of the House Rep. Murrell Smith, R-Sumter, all took part in the official groundbreaking ceremony for CCTC’s new Academic Student Services Building scheduled to be completed in two years and open in January 2026.

The 58,000-square-foot facility will feature two three-story wings joined by a connecting hallway and will reorganize and cluster many of the college’s student services together in a single wing, providing easy access to departments including admissions, dual enrollment, academic advisement, financial aid, finance and career services.

That wing will also include a flexible multipurpose space and adjoining commercial kitchen to accommodate a variety of student life and campus events and functions.

The other side will be an academic wing and will provide additional classroom and lab space and will consolidate faculty and instructional space into a single location.

The state’s technical college system includes 16 technical colleges and has always had a reputation for meeting industries’ workforce needs.

Central Carolina serves the greater Sumter region, which also includes Clarendon, Lee and Kershaw counties, and CCTC president Kevin Pollock also announced additional appropriations that have been made for the college’s Advanced Manufacturing Technology Training Center on Broad Street and also at the Kershaw and Lee sub-campuses.

Smith said the groundbreaking and other college funding made it a “very good day” in the Sumter community but also for the four-county region.

“This is about educating students for today, but more importantly for this community, this is about the future of our community,” Smith said. “The students who attend here, we ultimately place them for jobs and jobs that are needed to be filled at this point.

“This is where the rubber meets the road. I can tell you the best place where you can produce a ready workforce is right here at Central Carolina Technical College.”

Pollock said the three-story building will be the tallest structure on the main campus on Guignard Drive and was originally planned to be two separate buildings. However, given current inflation, the college was not going to be able to afford them.

According to Pollock, Smith assisted the college with obtaining more money this year and the concept of combining the two structures into one large-scale building actually saved about $10 million in construction costs. The total cost for the project is $39 million in state funding, he said.

In the construction process, the college will also demolish some older facilities to include the M200 Building and wing of the M100 Building.

Pollock added the project was “truly a team effort” on the part of the college’s leadership team and the legislative bodies.

The project architect is Quackenbush Architects, based in Columbia.

Construction will be handled by Hood Construction, also based in Columbia.

Building construction is scheduled to begin early next year with an anticipated completion date of November 2025 in time for spring semester classes, which will begin in January 2026.

Central Carolina’s fall enrollment is 3,002 students, officials said.

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