LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Valley leaders have officially broken ground on the new Historic Westside Education and Training Center.
The 15,000-square-foot training center will be located at 1099 C Street on the Historic Westside School campus and provide credentialed job training programs in advanced manufacturing, health care, technology, and construction trades.
U.S. Rep. Steven Horsford and Las Vegas City Councilman Cedric Crear both said it is a welcome and needed addition to the area.
"When you're at the top of the Stratosphere and look at the valley at night, there are bright and shining lights throughout our great city. But for too long, there has been an area of this city that has not received the same level of investment, the same level of commitment. For too long, the projects got built on the other side of the freeway. For too long, there were projects that were proposed and they always made their ways to other places and not to the Historic Westside," Horsford said. "With the councilman's leadership and those working together at the local, state, and federal level, this is changing."
"For a long time, there were ideas and plans for the Westside. I, as a resident and a person who was born and raised in this community, spent time coming down to meet, to greet, to talk about what we want to be and what we want to do when we grow up and nothing would happen for various reasons," Crear said. "I literally told our city team that we are not going to let this happen again. We are going to come together. We are going to make things happen for the betterment and improvement of our community."
The project is part of a collaboration between the City of Las Vegas and the College of Southern Nevada.
CSN President Federico Zaragoza said he has helped bring similar projects to life.
"We're replicating this project from a project that I had in San Antonio, Texas called the Westside Education & Training Center, which actually was an opportunity to go to the west side of San Antonio, which is a high-need area," Zaragoza explained. "It worked so well that the community invested $35 million to actually expand the center that was originally created when I was there. We knew it worked and we knew it created opportunities for people that otherwise were being left behind and that's the target population this project addresses. It's filling a huge gap that exists in workforce development in Las Vegas."
Zaragoza added the project will help make college and higher education less intimidating and more accessible.
"I think for the College of Southern Nevada, this is an opportunity to create bridges from inner-city areas into higher education and that's not been done in very many places across the country," Zaragoza said. "It's not just a new building. We're trying to break the cycle of poverty here in the west side of Las Vegas."
The $16.4 million training center is being partially funded by a U.S. Economic Development Administration grant.
The project is scheduled to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2025.
This is one of several projects that Las Vegas leaders have been working on as part of the Hundred Plan. Other projects include improvements to Jackson Avenue and the groundbreaking for the new shareDowntown apartments.
WATCH: Moving the Historic Westside forward: Inside efforts to revitalize Las Vegas' historically Black community
