Business View Magazine | December 2020

318 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2020 junior college for being ahead of the game with community needs. He states, “What’s driving that is the workforce development, not just for north Alabama, but for all of Alabama. Two-year college systems are under the gun now to improve technical training, to expand those courses that are non-academic but are skill based. And this school falls right into that category as a workforce dependant program because the skills that are taught in aviation maintenance carry over to so many other job skills. For instance if you can do sheet metal on airplane you can certainly do it in a heating and air situation in a building; if you can do electronics on an airplane, you can do it in the automotive world; if you can do welding on an airplane, you can do it at some kind of mechanical facility, so the skill levels taught there carry over to a lot of other different things.” The city has also invested more than $80 million into a new recreation complex and amphitheater designed by Chambless King Architects. The 129-acre recreation facility, The Sand Mountain Park and Amphitheater, has almost everything a resident could want for themselves and their families. It’s a sports, leisure, wellness, and entertainment park that includes 14 outdoor turf fields, 16 tennis courts, a 103,000-square-foot community recreation center with hardwood basketball courts, a two-story fitness centre, an eight-lane indoor competition pool, and locker rooms. Along with an outdoor water park, a 7,500 person amphitheater, playgrounds, an RV park, and conference or party rooms. There are also concessions, a dog park, batting cages, a disc golf course, beach volleyball courts… the joys are endless. Cofield couldn’t be happier with the results from the park, which is expected to fully open in the fall of 2021. He explains, “When you build something of that scale in a community, what that’s done for us already is attract two new hotels. And we currently have three new restaurants going in, so that’s been a really great promotion for the city from an economic