BC3 announces $1.25 million renovation through donation, grant
A one-time, six-figure donation and a grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Education will allow Butler County Community College to follow through on long-planned upgrades at its main campus.
BC3’s board of trustees approved The West End Project at a special meeting Wednesday, Nov. 11. The project’s cost of $1.25 million will be covered by a $625,000 grant and an equivalent donation made by Harold Larrick through the BC3 Education Foundation.
“The state had some leftover funds, and the community college was able to get a donation from the state,” said William DiCuccio, vice chair of the board of trustees. “We put up half the amount for that. This is costing the college nothing out of operating funds.”
The project will include establishing the Glenn T. Miller Welcome Center in the bottom of the Student Success Center. The welcome center is named after the former BC3 trustee who died in January.
“This represents a really nice coming together of things for the college,” said BC3 president Megan Coval. “We had connected with (Larrick) about his potential interest in supporting the pavilion, the outdoor space, and he very generously and excitedly supported it.”
“The refresh would include reorienting the offices in that area so the students coming on campus, it would seem more intuitive to go right to the admissions office, where we’ll use branding ideas, so we’re selling students on the college as they come through that phase,” said Jake Friel, BC3’s vice president of finance. “It’s a much needed refresh, and we think it will help with student enrollment and make a better first impression.”
The project will also include construction of a pavilion and outdoor space that can be utilized for various events. According to a BC3 news release, the pavilion area will be located outside the top of the Student Success Center and will be around 2,500 square feet in size.
“We’re going to leave it up to the design firm that gets the contract to kind of, with our input, come up with a great idea for a space that’s going to be outdoors,” Friel said. “Oftentimes, when we have an outdoor event, we use tents and just hope for good weather. This will give us a space that can be utilized for those types of events and also for general congregation.”
The project includes the demolition of the former Continuing Education building, which sits in disrepair in front of the Student Success Center, having been abandoned for years, Friel said.
Over the past year, BC3 leadership has made a push to raise funds for capital projects. In July, the university promoted the BC3 Future Fund, a large-scale fundraising effort that at the time had raised about $1.7 million toward its overall goal of $6 million.
“The campaign’s priorities are to improve the experience of students, to strengthen that of the nearly 18,000 community members who in 2025 attended 176 events on BC3’s main campus, and to invest in workforce innovation,” the BC3 news release stated.
