Patrick Patterson, president of Viridian Management, addresses the Wallowa County Board of Commissioners during their Wednesday, April 6, 2022, meeting. He and Superintendent Karen Patton, of the Wallowa County Educational Service District, left, are proposing a project for which they are seeking the county’s backing.

ENTERPRISE — In an effort to provide local training for skilled workers, the Wallowa County Board of Commissioners lent its support Wednesday, April 6, to a project being undertaken by the Educational Service District in partnership with Viridian Management to create a vocational training center in Enterprise.

The ESD and Viridian — the latter part of the Enterprise-based Chrisman Group — hope to enter into a public-private partnership to obtain a U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development Rural Innovation (for a) Stronger Economy grant. The grant, which could be anywhere from $500,000 to $2 million, would be to purchase the former Chevrolet dealership building in Enterprise, into which the ESD would move. It now shares a building with Viridian.

Patrick Patterson, president of Viridian, emphasized the public-private nature of the project.

“The private entity would be our group — the Chrisman Group and the entities that we have,” he said. “We employ about 250 people. The public group would be the ESD, which would also be the lead applicant of this grant. Should we get this grant, the ESD would be the one who would administer the grant and take possession of anything we purchase with the grant.”

He emphasized that it’s still uncertain if the partnership will be able to get the grant.

“We’re under the gun right now,” he said. “We came across this at the 11th hour, but we felt like it gets every single thing that they’re trying to get with this grant and it supports what everybody’s trying to figure out: to get people trained, to get people interested in training. We just thought it was a natural partnership to involve the high schools and get the kids into that.”

If the grant comes through, Patterson said, Viridian would purchase the ESD’s share of the Wallowa Valley Professional Building, giving Viridian room to expand its training facilities. The ESD would have more room, too, in the former Chevrolet dealership.

“I would just say that the schools have been fully supportive of this concept,” said Karen Patton, superintendent of the ESD. “We’re all just very excited about the possibilities.”

She added that the public-private partnership would be a lasting one.

“It would be a long-term partnership,” she said.

Patterson said they were not asking the county for money, but told the commissioners that the grant must be matched with 20% nonfederal funds.

“At least 20% of the funds have to come from a nonfederal source,” he said. “We can also do in-kind donations, which means that if someone uses their time, that time counts as a donation. So our funding use if we did this would be to build or support a community facility and to provide worker training to assist them to provide new jobs, create an existing workforce and develop basic skilled workers and improve the opportunities to obtain other high-wage jobs.”

He said the RISE grant fits well with Wallowa County.

“The RISE project must serve a rural region small enough to allow a close collaboration among partners and Enterprise fits that pretty well perfectly,” he said. “We would also be serving other rural areas. … There’s a fair amount of state money that’s going to be coming in for jobs training. What that’s really going to look like, we don’t 100% know, so I’m not going to go into that.”

The grant can be used to pay for nearly all elements of getting the innovation center going, Patterson said.

“In the grant uses, you can use it to construct or purchase a building that’s going to serve as an innovation center but it has to be located in a rural community,” he said. “You can purchase equipment for support programs to be carried out and, as I said before, the lead applicant (the ESD) has to be the primary person on the grant.”