The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded a $1 million grant to South Seattle Community College so it can construct facilities for the Puget Sound Industrial Excellence Center.

The award is part of a $5 million challenge grant from the foundation to the Seattle Community Colleges.

The excellence center brings together a diverse set of partners from the private and public sectors to support technical education, economic development and family-wage jobs in our region and is located at the college's Duwamish Apprenticeship and Education Center in the Georgetown area,

The center supports four areas:

- Supporting existing business, especially manufacturing, transportation and construction industries, many of them family-owned enterprises.

- Encouraging new business development, especially in the Duwamish corridor.

- Supporting small business with a new One-stop Business and Entrepreneurial Services Center.

- Expanding support for apprenticeship training at Duwamish, where about one-third of all apprentices in the state now receive their training.

The new center will be two buildings, housing offices, classrooms and training space. One 13,400 square-foot building will include office space and general classrooms. A second, 19,570-square-foot vocational building will enable apprentices in the "trowel" trades to receive their hands-on instruction in up-to-date facilities. Some of the existing facilities for those trades, which include cement masons, bricklayers, caulkers and tile setters, are in external areas.

Construction is expected to begin in December and the first building will be ready for occupancy in winter 2007. The Industrial Excellence Center facility will be located in part on the historic "Hat and Boots" property, at Corson Avenue South and East Marginal Way South, which South Seattle Community College acquired in 2004.

The $5 million challenge grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to the Seattle Community Colleges was announced in early November. Seattle Central Community College also received a $1 million grant, which will be used to equip that college's new Mathematics & Science Building. The remainder of the grant is directed toward instructional equipment and emergency grants to students, and is earmarked for distribution at the conclusion of the colleges' $25 million capital campaign.