Forsyth Technical Community College Announces a Major Expansion Project Off Campus

Forsyth Technical Community College is building a $7 million Center for Emerging Technologies in downtown Winston-Salem. The center will be located in the Wake Forest Innovation Quarter.  

Gary Greene is the president of Forsyth Tech. He says the school is one of the fastest growing community colleges in the country. During the past seven years there, enrollment has doubled.

Green says the new center will serve more than 1,200 students annually.

“It will fully house our small business center, and we serve over a thousand people there with individual one-on-one business counseling for people who want to start their own small businesses, as well as classes in entrepreneurship. We will also have a large laboratory facility that will have high-end equipment to support our biotechnology and nanotechnology programs.”

Green says that in an effort to support emerging companies throughout Forsyth and Stokes Counties, the college will relocate its office for facilities and corporate training to Innovation Quarter.

The former “90 series” R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company building is being renovated for the project.  Forsyth Tech's new educational facility joins the recently announced Express YMCA as the second tenant planned for the site at Innovation Quarter.

Forsyth Tech will lease the facility from Wexford Science & Technology of Baltimore, the current owner of the building.  Green says the new center is needed to help support economic growth in the region.  

“You will have Inmar, which is an exciting new information and technology company that is growing in our community. We will also be serving the needs of the life science industry that Wake Forest is bringing downtown to Innovation Quarter and the businesses that will spin out of that, companies like Carolina Liquid Chemistries that are located here,” says Green.

According to Green, the project is a community effort. Forsyth Tech recently finished its Momentum Capital Campaign to help raise money for the center. The total amount raised during the campaign was $13.7 million.  

In addition, the college is receiving some state and county funding for the project.

The more than 23,000 square foot facility will open in the Wake Forest Innovation Quarter in October 2014.