BELMONT, N.C. — The hallways and rooms are empty now, but Gaston College leaders hope the new 39,000-square-foot facility on its Kimbrell Campus will open its doors to the future of the textile industry.
“We realized there was something we needed to do differently," John Hauser, the president of Gaston College, said. "And that was expand out our textile program."
He said the idea to expand the textile program got rolling during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hauser said it was all about upgrading Harney Hall, which was built in the 1940s. It became a focal point for different industries in 2020.
“Companies around brought their materials for us to test the quality and the fibers that were being used for the development of the swabs and the masks,” Hauser explained.
Fast forward to 2021, when the school broke ground on the new fiber innovation center, just a few feet away from old Harney Hall.
“There’s been a very big change on how we view our textiles and how we make our textiles. That’s what the fiber innovation center’s main target is as far as the way we support the industry," Stephen Sharp, the vice president of fiber innovation and facilities development, said. "So, we’ll have equipment here and we’ll have technology here that we will learn new ways to make textiles from molecule to fabric."
Textiles go far beyond the clothes we wear. For example, textiles are a part of the tires on cars and a big part of what goes into cellphones. And it's a huge industry in North Carolina. According to the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina, the Tar Heel State leads the nation with nearly 20% of all U.S. textile exports.
“When we have industry or trainees or our students come here, we want them to know that they are in the right place,” Jasmine Cox-Wade, the executive director of Gaston College's Textile Technology Center, said.
The new fiber innovation center will allow Gaston College to grow its academic and industry training programs.
“The industry is getting younger. There are more and more people in my generation — millennials and Generation Z — who are finding out about textiles," Cox-Wade said. "For a long time, it was kind of an unspoken thing. A lot of people who had bad experiences with layoffs and things in the '90s though the early 2000s.
“The talk of this trade and having a promising career kind of went away when those jobs went away. So, I don’t think a lot of people in this region or nationally understand that the textile industry is still here. Just in a different way.”
Over the next several months the school will start moving in equipment, a lot of which has been donated. The plan is to open this fall.
Contact Nick Sturdivant at nsturdiva1@wcnc.com and follow him on Facebook, X and Instagram.
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