Creston joins CDL training ranks

Almost two years and more than half a million dollars in grant money later, SWCC’s Transportation Training Center is open and ready to accept students for the fall semester.

The college held a ribbon cutting Thursday for the new center, located next to the Agricultural Sciences Center on Green Valley Road. The addition brings a building expansion and concrete pad for range course driving to the site. SWCC President Lindsay Stoaks and Vice President of Economic Development Wayne Pantini thanked the state and community for their support in getting this new center open.

“The new facility and training range will serve as premier CDL training for individuals and businesses in industry across southwest and central Iowa,” Stoaks said. “We’re very excited to serve in this capacity, further demonstrating our relevance in meeting workforce needs.”

Pantini also mentioned bringing the motorcycle training program to the new addition.

“We wanted to share the bigger picture of this and not just focus on the CDL, because we’ve had for several years a motorcycle training program, typically from May through September,” Pantini said. “With this project, we’re able to relocate that project out here as well. We just got approved this last week to have that motorcycle training here at our range, so we’ll be relocating that program here.”

The two also introduced Dante Powell, who was recently hired as the college’s coordinator of transportation training programs.

“Thank you guys for being here and for all your support along the way. I’m very excited to get this program up and running,” Powell said. “We really look forward to helping Creston and the surrounding area grow this thing.”

SWCC’s journey to starting their own transportation and CDL training program began in late summer 2023 following the 2022 closure of the college’s CDL program due to new federal requirements. Pantini said his team had been looking into ways to bring the courses back to SWCC when Governor Kim Reynolds announced a new grant opportunity.

“There’s a lot of demand out there that we can’t currently serve because we don’t have the infrastructure and equipment to do so,” Pantini said in 2023. “We went to Northwest Community College for a discovery mission over a couple of days to meet with them on their CDL program. Ironically, on August 10, second day we were there, Gov. Kim Reynolds made an announcement of a $5 million CDL grant.”

The new grant focuses on creating or providing CDL infrastructure. According to Future Ready Iowa, the grant “will provide up to $5 million to assist community colleges with building, purchasing or remodeling CDL training infrastructure.”

Gov. Kim Reynolds announced this grant due to the projected need of “more than 10,000 commercial drivers annually between 2020 and 2030.”

SWCC was awarded $665,000 from the Iowa grant that October. Requiring a 50% monetary match, Pantini said this contribution from the college came from previous investments and funds.

“We won’t need to go out and borrow money; we have those dollars that will be eligible to use and that we have already that we’ve accrued over the years,” Pantini said. “We’re excited about that, and obviously coming up with 50% of that cash match for the grant, we don’t always have the ability to do that and leverage those dollars, but we do have that, which is good.”

The project progressed quickly, with SWCC hosting a groundbreaking June 20, 2024, with construction partners Denovo Construction Solutions and Premier Construction Services.

With the ribbon cutting for the new center complete the week after SWCC’s spring 2025 commencement, the college is ready to welcome new students to the program for the upcoming semester. To learn more about the new program or to apply as a student, go to www.swcciowa.edu/business-and-community-development/training/transportation-training or contact Powell at (641) 782-1414.