Crews are constructing a trades education facility at Oregon Coast Community College‘s campus in Newport.

The 22,000-square-foot Oregon Coast Advanced Technology & Trades (OCATT) Center is expected to cost approximately $30 million, according to Dave Price, vice president of engagement at the college. Officials are drawing money from a $33 million bond approved by Lincoln County voters in May 2024 as well as an $8 million contribution from the state approved by the Oregon Legislature.

The project team consists of architect partners GLAS Architects of Eugene and Hacker, civil engineer Mazzetti, structural engineer KPFF, and general contractor Lease Crutcher Lewis.

Staffers in the OCATT Center will provide hands-on training in construction and carpentry, HVAC systems, welding, industrial facility maintenance, and maritime technology. Also, pre-apprenticeship programs will be expanded from once a year to year-round.

Although the college currently has 16 workspaces at its Port of Toledo welding lab, it does not have sufficient linear space for pipe fitting instruction. The new building will fill that void.

Construction/carpentry will be a new program for the college.

“There’s some interesting things happening in the local high schools that we’re working very closely with (Lincoln County) School District so that we’re not being duplicative, and we’re building on what they’re doing,” Price said.

The OCATT Center will have four primary workspaces: a build lab, a mechanical lab, an electronic lab, and a “dirty build” lab for metalwork, welding and work on diesel engines. The build lab will have a wet area for aquaculture work tied to the Aquarium Science building.

Spaces in the OCATT Center will be able to accommodate a variety of uses. The plan is for programming to shift according to the changing market demands of the area, Price said, so the spaces can be used for decades.

“Flexibility has been crucial from day one when we pitched this as a proposal to the voters,” he said.

Oregon Coast Community College also may adjust its programming in consideration of what’s being offered at other coastal colleges.

“When Tillamook Bay or Clatsop rolls out a new program or another new facility that their taxpayers provide, we want to be mindful of the fact that we don’t want to all be competing in the same space,” Price said.

Future programming in Newport could include aquaculture, maritime welding, commercial diving and welding, and more. College officials do not want to pursue a new program if there is not at least 10 years of potential capacity for businesses in the region to hire those students so they can leverage their education into good paying jobs, Price said.

The OCATT Center will be able to receive a lot of natural light through glazing at both the front and back. The exterior building material will be metal siding with slate green chevrons in a random design. Exposed mass timber will jut out under the roofline, as well as in the interior space. The inside will also feature white walls.

“It’s not going to be kind of dark and metal inside like what you might expect for an industrial building,” Price said. “We really want this to be a bright, modern learning space.”

A roll-up glass door will allow space for a truck to enter or a boat to be dropped off inside. That will let students work indoors on large vehicles or vessels.

The new facility will be across from the Aquarium Science building. The two buildings’ roof lines will slope down toward each other, Price said.

Construction of the OCATT Center is under way. In November and December, the lot was cleared and graveled. Trenching has been ongoing. Last week, workers started pouring foundations and footings, and walls will not be far behind, Price said.

The facility is expected to open in fall 2027.

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The central Oregon coast is not a hotbed of welding talent. So the Port of Toledo‘s manager, Bud Shoemake, decided to initiate an effort to change that.

Under Shoemake’s supervision, roughly two dozen staffers operate the Port of Toledo shipyard and perform a variety of marine repair and maintenance services. Specialized skills – including welding – are required, and the port has encountered difficulty finding and keeping skilled workers. That led Shoemake, as part of the port’s five-year development plan, to create a pathway for certified welders in the small logging town on the Yaquina River.

“I’ve always said that Toledo was famous for exporting wood products and kids, and what we’re trying to do is get these kids good jobs locally,” Shoemake said.

To make it happen, the Port of Toledo went after and received a $261,285 Maritime Administration Small Shipyard Grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation in June 2019. The port then partnered with Oregon Coast Community College (OCCC) and Northwest Oregon Works, a nonprofit focused on workforce development, and used the grant money to build and equip a 12-bay welding training lab at the Toledo Shipyard Industrial Park. The new lab space will be available starting in February for Lincoln County high school students who enroll in an OCCC welding program. The course is also open to adults seeking to become certified welders.

The college is also offering welding classes at Taft High School, which has its own workspace funded by the Lincoln County School District. Regardless of location, people who complete the new semester-long course will obtain industry certification and become qualified for jobs in a variety of fields.

“They’ll be certified,” Shoemake said. “We use a lot of wire, and we also do some stick welding. And we cut with plasma cutters. But mainly it’s just a lot of wire welding. It’s not ABS certification, which is more for shipyard stuff.”

Preliminary interest in the program when it was announced this past summer suggests there is strong demand locally for such training. Dave Price, director of marketing at OCCC and former director of its small business development center, said the reaction on social media and in real life was much stronger than expected.

“It told us in no uncertain terms there is huge interest in the trades,” Price said. “So we’re doing everything we can to develop that.”

The new welding lab is an offshoot of wider development efforts by the Port of Toledo, which started with the purchase of a boatyard from Fred Wahl Marine Construction a decade ago. Eventually, the Port adopted a new business plan, which included an education component aimed at training new welders.

“We started an internship program in the boatyard last year, and to qualify for that the schools had to have an industrial program or shop classes,” Shoemake said. “Waldport (High School) and Toledo (High School) did, but nobody else did in the district, so that really got us thinking about it.”

More recently, Lincoln County resident Annette Mulee donated to the college $25,000 that will be used to fund 10 scholarships for welding students working out of Taft High School. The scholarships will cover tuition, books, consumables and fees associated with the course.

The courses will be taught by Mike Rasmussen, former department chairman for welding at Portland Community College‘s Swan Island Trades Center in Portland.

It’s not a moment too soon, as far as Shoemake is concerned.

“We did a couple of big projects last year, and we had to hire 13 temporary welders from all over North America,” he said. “We did that just to try and keep up with the schedule.”

Fortunately, OCCC anticipates little difficulty in filling available slots.

“Our big concern is managing expectations,” Price said. “We have 20 bays, so we’ll have one class that runs from February through June. And we’re going to put these 20 students in the new certificate program.”

Then, he added, the possibility of expanding the program could be explored.

“This welding (course) is the beginning of what we expect to be a broader, larger marine technology program,” he said.

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