When a professional services request for the Piedmont Community College’s (PCC) Center for Educational and Agricultural Development (CEAD) came to us from IHR Architecture to work on their latest project, it was an easy decision to get involved. The project is an 80-acre campus to provide support to PCC’s Caswell County campus with the addition of educational space, farmland, a food hub for storage and distribution, a commercial driver license (CDL) training area, a livestock demonstration facility, and outdoor space for the community. The new campus will be located in the town of Pelham, North Carolina, just southwest of Danville, Virginia.

This project is as much for the community as it is by the community. Our firm and others involved have close ties to the Caswell County community and look forward to supporting it. We are providing civil, mechanical, electrical, plumbing and fire protection engineering services, as well as landscape architecture for the site. The community has also come together in other ways to support the project. For example, parts of the campus’s educational farm plots were plowed and prepped by local farmers.

Overview of the Space

The plot of land will be home to multiple spaces that promote wellness and education.

Incubator Farm

The incubator farm is a space where students can learn how to manage their land. It is comprised of multiple half-acre plots that will be leased to students in a PCC program. In the program, students learn how to make choices on what they want to produce with the land, such as what to grow, when to grow, what fertilizers to use, when to fertilize, and more. Through hands-on tending, students see how those choices impact the land and their yield, and in turn, how they impact potential profits. Students can also learn about storage distribution of their crops through the use of the food hub. One of the goals is that by working with 4P Foods, who will manage the food hub, is that they can partner and gain insights into what is needed in the marketplace. The incubator farm format allows the students to work at a smaller scale with the support of the agricultural faculty at PCC to gain experience and be prepared to scale their efforts in the community following graduation. The farm buildings will include a wash station and onsite cooling units to aid with their education and knowledge for Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) certification to provide produce to customers, whether wholesale or retail.

This project is as much for the community as it is by the community. Our firm and others involved have close ties to the Caswell County community and look forward to supporting it.” Justin Rogers

Food Hub

The food hub is a collaboration between 4P Foods and PCC. This facility has the ability to store, receive, and deliver food items and work in tandem with the produce grown in the incubator farms. The facility will be equipped with walk-in coolers and freezers for preparing and storing produce. There will also be raised docks for receiving and delivering the produce through 4P’s services. The setup is planned to support local farmers in the area so they can bring their produce and eggs for distribution.

Behind the food hub building will be additional space to hold forklift training. Courses will be available to PCC students as well as the community at large. For students, this training could be used with the food hub directly as they move produce around in the facility or in other warehouse settings when loading commercial vehicles for distribution. PCC is incorporating trade and skills development on the campus to support multiple needs of agribusiness.

---

Agribusiness Educational Building

Another exciting aspect of the design is the Agribusiness Educational Building. This building will be home to classrooms for PCC, which will double as a potential conference space in the future. There will be traditional lecture-style classrooms in addition to hands-on classrooms for welding and small engine repair. Additionally, the building will feature a small clinic in partnership with the Caswell County Health Department, which will offer convenience for local community members who are experiencing mild health problems. Combining educational and public health spaces is an example of how this project uses collaboration in the community to benefit its members. The collaboration with the local health department will incorporate training opportunities for PCC nursing students. The project is located in a rural area and the site will aid in supporting the primary health needs of those with limited access to healthcare centers.

What’s Next?

The project is currently in Phase I, which includes the food hub and incubator farm. This phase is planned to be completed by spring 2025. Phases II and III are planned to continue after the completion of Phase I. There is no set date for their completion. Once completed, the campus will be an intersection of community and education and we look forward to the positive impacts it will provide to the health and wellness of Caswell County.