With hopes of a new penny tax being passed by county voters, Piedmont Technical College announced today it has secured an option to purchase the former Wal-Mart building on Wilson Road.

PTC plans to renovate the old retail store into a new satellite campus.

College officals will be pursuing a spot on the November 2010 capital project sales tax referendum to fund the proposed $6 million facility.

The option to purchase the property will be good until January 2011, meaning the college has until that date to purchase the store.

To renovate the empty 70,000-square foot Wilson Road retail space, the college is seeking $6 million in penny tax revenues, which would come from a voter-approved continuation of an existing sales tax that has been in place in Newberry County since 1998.

But there are several hoops the plans must jump through in order to gain a place on the 2010 ballot.

College representatives must first convince county officials to sponsor the project and the recently-appointed Capital Project Sales Tax Commission must decide put the project on the ballot.

County Council will need to lend support to the project by agreeing the title to the property will be in the county’s name until the sales tax to pay for the capital projects has been collected. During this time, the county would charge Piedmont Tech a “nominal” fee to lease the property. After the project is paid for by taxes, the deed would likely be transferred to the college.

“The proposed renewal and re-use effort would bring back to life an empty ‘big box’ retail building of the kind that is increasingly common in communities across the country,” according to a press release from the technical college. “The specific re-use of the building would include increased classroom space, a new jobs-specific training program, and room for growth at a satellite campus that has outstripped student enrollment projections in recent years.”

According to Piedmont Tech President Ray Brooks, the expanded campus would be a draw for the recruitment of industry to Newberry County, because of a highly-adaptable job skills training lab. At the same time, course offerings in Newberry would be expanded.

“Technical colleges are about real-world job skills and accessible education. If this project is approved by the sales tax commission and the voters, it will significantly improve economic opportunities for the people of Newberry County,” said Brooks in today’s press release. “It would be the most advanced technical college satellite campus in our seven-county area, and perhaps in the state of South Carolina.”

“We’re not taking anything for granted,” says Jim Klauber, a senior vice president designated by Piedmont Tech to spearhead the project. “Many worthy projects will be considered by the commission, but we feel this one holds great value for the future of the entire county, especially for those citizens who need to compete for better and more stable jobs.”

Piedmont Tech’s early start in seeking ballot approval is driven partially by state requirements, which include approval by the State Budget and Control Board and the Commission on Higher Education of the project.

These prerequisites have necessitated preliminary architectural work for the facility, as well as securing the purchase option on the former Wal-Mart building.

“It’s an energetic start because we believe in the project,” Klauber says, while conceding that waiting several months would make it impossible to complete the state-level requirements in time to make it onto the ballot. The sales tax commission has set March 10, 2010 as the deadline for proposal submissions.