DALTON, Ga. — Now that ground has been broken for an expansion of the Dalton campus of Georgia Northwestern Technical College, one local business is ready to take advantage of the programs that will be offered there. 

During last week’s Whitfield Murray Campus Phase II groundbreaking ceremony, GNTC President Pete McDonald confirmed the college’s Machine Tool Technology program will move from the Walker County campus to the new Dalton facility. It will be part of the nearly $28 million project that will encompass 80,000 square feet.

Although the complex is not slated for completion until November of 2018, the move has Johnathon Densmore, chief operating officer of Densmore Machine Co. of Dalton, ready to see more opportunities for local companies like his.

“Blue collar jobs are not promoted properly, and kids here need to understand they can make a good living by working with their hands,” said Densmore, who said his multi-generational family business works closely with local schools. “We are pumping up the kids who come through here and showing them, look, if you don’t want to run a tufting machine or drive a Hyster, you can come back to what we are doing, and if it weren’t for our parts, you wouldn’t have the tufting machine or the Hyster. What we do is the very initial platform in life. Everything starts with machining.” 

Also last week, Jeffreys Manufacturing Solutions presented GNTC with a $17,500 grant through the Gene Haas Foundation Machining Technology Scholarship for the college’s Machine Tool Technology program. The grant was presented at Densmore Machine, which uses Haas equipment.

Philip Shirley, director of the Machine Tool Technology program, said he is excited for the opportunities the move to Dalton will bring to the students in the program. 

“Dalton is a much bigger industrial base we will be moving into, and it will close the gap in the needs of the machine tool industry here in the area across north Georgia,” Shirley said. “Putting us closer to a whole new service area that stretches across to Gilmer and Pickens County and to the south and up along the north into Cohutta and over into Murray County, it is exciting.”

Shirley said the grant will fund books for the program and tools that students are allowed to keep once they graduate from the program. The grant will benefit the program for the next two-and-a-half years and follows a $20,000 grant from the Haas Foundation to GNTC in 2016.

David Aycock of Jeffreys Manufacturing Solutions, who made the presentation on behalf of the Haas Foundation, said the foundation’s grant will help programs like GNTC’s keep up with the latest innovations in the machine and milling industry.

“The manual lathes and mills your father and grandfather grew up learning how to manually machine something is a thing of the past,” he said. “Now it can be done with a computer where the computer reads a certain code and they machine it, and the consistency and the accuracy is all better, but today you have to go to a technical school in order to run one. These guys can tell you they look for guys coming out of the technical schools, and places like Densmore can train them and make them even more proficient.”

Johnathon Densmore said the program is definitely needed, and as more diversified businesses enter the area, they will need a workforce skilled in the kinds of programs offered by GNTC.

“Our workforce development here in Dalton needs it,” Densmore said. “Other businesses that come into Dalton want to know what kind of educational backups those companies can offer. This is a big deal. We already have a blue-collar workforce that most cities our size wish they had, and this will give more education to the background. Large OEM (original equipment manufacturer) developers need a supply chain and what other support network is there to help them grow?”

Shirley said he sees a gap between the demand for skilled workers and the number of qualified applicants to fill those roles. He said he hopes GNTC’s new facility in Dalton will help fill that gap.

“A lot of the companies in the machining industry don’t hire because of a lack of qualified applicants,” he said. “They wouldn’t offer positions or increase their employees because they just can’t find people. There is a huge gap. I could probably place three times the number of students we graduate each year. Most of our students are recruited and have jobs waiting for them when they graduate. 

“They are good-paying jobs and good opportunities.”