Two new facilities on verge of opening

OTC will open two new facilities next month – the OTC Table Rock Campus and the OTC Waynesville Center.

It will mark the start of new educational opportunities in those two regions and bring to a close a challenging couple of years for two OTC administrators – Vice Chancellor for Administrative Services Rob Rector and college Architect Harlan Hill.

For more than two years, the pair has spent countless hours on the simultaneous construction work, the most aggressive pair of projects since OTC built the Springfield campus.

In addition to the two major projects, the College has also been working on major in-fill work at the OTC Lebanon Center, which will also be finished this summer.

Between them, Rector and Hill have driven tens of thousands of miles from Springfield to Hollister and Waynesville twice a week. Rector has been heading up the projects for nearly three years and Hill has been on board for 18 months.

“It has been quite the challenge, but fortunately the professionalism of the contractor and design team for each project has kept my job manageable,” Hill said. 

The Table Rock Campus, located at 10698 Historic Highway 165 in Hollister, is a $12 million project that includes a four-floor state-of-the-art building with classrooms, laboratories, student services facilities and offices.

The Waynesville center has a new one-story building with 28,560 square feet. It features 11 classrooms and computer labs, two science labs, a student commons/lobby area, a quiet study space, and administrative offices.

Rector said when the projects are finished, it will mark the first time in the five years he’s been at OTC that there hasn’t been a major construction project going on.

Hill said it might take some time to adjust before jumping into work on the College’s master plan.

“I have been running at a high level of attention and awareness for quite awhile,” Hill said. “I will most likely go into a sense of neutral while the rpms are still racing until I get the green light for the next project.”