Electricians trade school sparks move to Midlothian with $2M deal

The building is currently home to for-profit college Centura College. (Mike Platania photo)

After 16 years in Hanover County, a local trade school is preparing to plug into Midlothian. 

The Richmond Electricians’ Joint Apprenticeship Training Committee (JATC) recently purchased a 23,000-square-foot building at 7914 Midlothian Turnpike, which will serve as its new home for training future electricians. 

The nonprofit paid $2.4 million for the building and expects to move in next summer. 

Gregg Spicer, JATC’s training director, said the group will be leaving its current facility at 11255 Air Park Road. 

Spicer said the 11,000-square-foot Hanover building has served the organization well since it bought it in 2007, but they’ve run out of space. 

“We had 80 to 100 apprentices for a long time, but starting in 2017, 2018, work started booming in Richmond and currently we have around 300,” he said. “We started growing and needed to find space.”

Spicer said the new building could handle over 500 students.

JATC is affiliated with both the trade group National Electrical Contractors Association and labor union International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Spicer said it receives the bulk of its funding from electrical firms that are signatories to the program and provide on-the-job training for apprentices. It also derives revenue from student tuition ($600 per semester). 

Gregg Spicer

Spicer said JATC has been active in the Richmond region since the 1940s and has had a number of homes over the years, with each move being prompted by the program’s growth. 

The group closed on its purchase of the Midlothian building on Oct. 12. The property was most recently assessed by the county at $1.9 million. One South Commercial’s Ken Campbell and Ann Schweitzer Riley represented JATC in the deal. 

The building is currently occupied by for-profit college Centura College, which Spicer said will operate there through the end of the year. After that, the JATC will get in and kick off some minor renovations ahead of a planned August 2024 move-in. 

Once operational in Midlothian, Spicer said the group will look to sell its Hanover facility.  County records show JATC bought that property in 2007 for $1.3 million. 

Spicer said most apprentices at the JATC complete the program in about four years and graduate with zero debt. He said apprentices start out earning over $18 per hour, and often transition straight into jobs earning over six figures. 

Despite the student-friendly nature of the industry, Spicer said many in the electrician industry are forecasting a huge deficit of tradespeople nationally in the next decade. 

“You have people that are retiring, and people that are just not getting into the trades. For so long the schools pushed college, and that’s a good thing if whatever you want to be in life requires you to go to college. But for so long so many go to college without knowing what they want to do,” Spicer said. 

“For plumbers, electricians, HVAC (technicians) and welders, right now you hear a lot of grumbling where, pretty much, we can name our price. Because we just don’t have enough of those tradespeople.”

In addition to historic electrical theory and on-the-job training, apprentices these days are also graduating with training in new technology.

“All our apprentices now have training in electric vehicle technology and infrastructure. We stay up to date with all the changing technologies,” Spicer said. “Our industry, there’s so much to it. Even in those 4 years, it’s hard to pack everything in, especially with technology changing all the time.”