After sitting unused for two decades, a historic eastern North Carolina train depot has been remodeled and transformed into a trade learning center.
The ribbon was cut on the Lenoir Community College Maysville Workforce Training Center on Thursday.
Town Manager Shumata Brown said it is a restoration of a piece of local history.
“This depot sat in the middle of town, delivering a lot of goods and services, transported people outside of town by their only means of transportation back in the early 1900s. They closed the railroad, someone bought the depot and used it as a mill on the outside of town,” he said. “Then we had some folks ... the Depot Savers, that had the idea, ‘Let's move it back into town, save some of the history of Maysville.'”
LCC partnered with the town to turn the building into a space for students to train in several in-demand career fields.
Brown said the building, “Sat here idle and everybody just passed through seeing the dilapidated building. “So, it's refreshing to see that this building has been renovated and repurposed for, I think, a greater cause of empowering our people with workforce development jobs – plumbing, HVAC, water and sewer -- to be able to have those living wages.”
In the future, the workforce center will also include training in healthcare fields.
The center includes two classrooms that can each hold about 15 to 20 students.
Classes begin for some students as early as next week, but most will start in the fall. About 100 students a year are expected to attend the new trade center.
The town received $750,000 in grant funding from the Golden LEAF Foundation for the remodeling.
