TCTC Breaks Ground for $31M Expansion to Anderson Campus
Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer
It was cold Friday morning as the red clay of Anderson County was turned over once again—this time not for another industrial park or a new subdivision, but for a different kind of growth. Tri-County Technical College President Galen DeHay stood before a line of golden shovels and a crowd of county leaders, educators, and community partners to mark the start of something both practical and quietly ambitious: a $31 million expansion of the college’s Anderson Campus, meant to reimagine the region’s relationship with work, training, and opportunity.
Since its opening in 2007, the Anderson Campus—36 acres along Michelin Boulevard—has been the local anchor of a college known across Upstate South Carolina for its pragmatic optimism. It was Tri-County’s first community campus, born from the idea that technical education should live close to where people do. Nearly two decades later, that idea has metastasized into master plans, federal grants, and an ever-expanding list of programs that blur the line between classroom and jobsite.
The new project, which will bring programs in mechatronics, automotive technology, commercial truck driving, heavy equipment operation, and utility work all under one roof, is as much a reflection of market forces as of mission. The expansion will transform the Anderson Campus into a regional hub for manufacturing, transportation, and logistics—a physical consolidation of the college’s fastest-growing programs, many now running at capacity or with waiting lists.
“This expansion is a game-changer for our students, our employers, and our region,” said DeHay. “These programs form the backbone of our economy and provide pathways to great careers with strong earning potential. In total, this expansion will allow us to serve more than a thousand students across eight programs.”
If education has always been a mirror of local identity, then in Anderson County, the reflection is made of grit and steel. The planned 25,000-square-foot automotive facility will replace the one in Pendleton, giving students access to larger labs and newer equipment. A new 13,000-square-foot academic building will allow the full mechatronics program to exist on one campus for the first time. A Heavy Duty Diesel program—still rare in South Carolina—will join them, built to meet an industry forever short on skilled hands.
The work, funded by a combination of capital reserves, state appropriations, a federal equipment grant, and philanthropic support from the college’s foundation, is expected to finish by late 2027. Between now and then, the Anderson landscape will slowly begin to change. On the west side of Michelin Boulevard, new training yards will rise: an 11,000-square-foot building for heavy equipment and forklift programs, an expanded outdoor lab for commercial driving, a ten-thousand-square-foot field where students will learn to string power lines against the Upstate sky.
“This is an investment in people, jobs, and the future of Anderson County,” said S.C. Sen. Mike Gambrell, noting the campus’s proximity to three federally designated Opportunity Zones. County Council Chair Tommy Dunn called it “an investment in people and in the workforce that drives our local economy.” For both men, the groundbreaking was less about buildings and more about geography—drawing opportunity closer to communities that have long needed access.
One key to that access sits just next door: the Anderson Institute of Technology, a gleaming facility that serves high school students from Anderson School Districts 3, 4, and 5. Its classrooms feed directly into Tri-County’s degree pathways, forging what DeHay calls a “clear bridge from high school to college and career.” Together, the two campuses form a near-continuous corridor of technical education—runways, in a sense, for young people determined to stay and work in the place they came from.
As machines and workers begin to arrive over the coming years, the new Anderson Campus will serve as a visible test of how far that mission can reach. For now, the site remains simple red dirt and winter grass. But beneath it lies a larger ambition, one that stretches beyond campus lines: to shape a workforce that not only learns here but builds here—laying down the infrastructure for an Upstate future still under construction.
