State and local officials and business leaders broke ground in Louisa on October 18 for the 24,000-square-foot Lawrence County Fiscal Court Community Development Building that will house, among other things, the Lawrence County JobSight comprehensive one-stop center. EKCEP staff had a great deal of input into the layout and design of the facility, which will be the first in eastern Kentucky built specifically to serve as a one-stop.

More than 50 people gathered at the future site of the facility to see construction officially begun on the $2 million project. Several of the speakers at the ground- breaking ceremony recognized the coordinated efforts the project has required during two years of planning and development.

By next summer the site—adjacent to the Lawrence County High School parking lot—will be occupied by the large community building complete with an auditorium, several meeting rooms, and a JobSight facility designed to best serve local one-stop customers, according to
99th District Rep. Rocky Adkins, who serves as chairman of EKCEP’s Workforce Investment Board. The community center and JobSight together will meet many of the area residents' needs, Adkins said in his address at the ceremony.

Adkins credited EKCEP Executive Director Mable Duke for initiating the idea of incorporating the JobSight center into design for the community building project. That idea quickly grew to the point where the final building design devotes more than half of its interior space to JobSight-related offices and services.

Services planned for the JobSight will feature those offered by partner programs including the Kentucky Dept. for Employment Services, Kentucky Dept. for Vocational Rehabilitation, and Workforce Investment Act (WIA) programs administered through the Northeast Kentucky Area Development Council, among other agencies, Adkins said. The JobSight partners will share space with programs administered by the Kentucky Cabinet for Families and Children.

Plans for the JobSight also provide for a large Career Resource Center, where job seekers will be able to use computers and the internet to help conduct their job search. The center will also include a fax machine, photocopier, a printer, resume-writing software and helpful books and videos on topics ranging from job interview techniques to time management.

Under the Workforce Investment Act (WIA), the concept of the one-stop is to gather all of those workforce-related job training and retraining services together all in one place and to offer them to area residents for free, Adkins said.

“What’s really exciting is that this all will be here under one roof,” Adkins said. “We’re truly providing a service to the community that it really needs.”

The Lawrence County facility will be EKCEP’s fifth comprehensive JobSight center in its 23-county Workforce Investment Area, Adkins noted.

Others taking part in the groundbreaking ceremony included: Larry Donahoe, county planner; Lawrence County Judge-Executive Dave Compton; Heath Preston, a field representative for Fifth District U.S. Congressman Hal Rogers; and Randall Burchett, the architect who designed the facility. EKCEP was represented by Duke and JobSight Manager Jennifer Thacker.

“JobSight” is the brand name for the one-stop centers operated by EKCEP under the federal Workforce Investment Act of 1998, which mandated the creation of one-stop workforce centers where customers can get access to the full array of federal employment and training services at a single location. EKCEP’s network of JobSight centers includes four comprehensive one-stop centers (in Bell, Clay, Perry and Pike counties), three JobSight Affiliate Sites and 68 JobSight Access Points.