Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida State College at Jacksonville President John Avendano on Monday, Aug. 31, 2026, at FSCJ Cecil Center. | Mike Mendenhall, Jacksonville Today
Published on August 31, 2026 at 7:03 pm
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Florida State College at Jacksonville will get $7 million in state assistance to expand a skilled trades institute on the Westside, while Cecil Spaceport receives $5 million for rocket testing.
The awards for FSCJ and Cecil were included in nearly $23 million in grants that Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Monday during a news conference at the college’s Cecil Center campus.
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FSCJ officials say the $7 million from the Florida Job Growth Grant Fund will speed up the establishment of the school’s Cecil Training Institute near the city’s Cecil Commerce Center.
The college plans to relocate its training facilities and double enrollment for welding and heating, ventilation and air conditioning program from the FSCJ campus Downtown by early 2028.
It also will be a future location for electric programs, which FSCJ President John Avendano said Monday will support maritime, logistics and other complementary industries.
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DeSantis’s grant announcement targeted job growth specifically related to the state’s maritime shipbuilding and repair sector, as well as Florida’s commercial defense, aerospace and spaceport operations.
“You’re talking about expanding job training, infrastructure, spaceport development, and helping our military installations all across the state of Florida,” DeSantis said. “Part of this is economic; part of this is doing our part to help with national security. But part of it is just cultural.”
Avendano says the welding and HVAC programs have maximum capacity at FSCJ’s Downtown campus. The move would allow the community college to train 1,000 workers per year plus 1,250 high school students going into those trade areas, he told Jacksonville Today.
Late last year, FSCJ was awarded $5 million from the city of Jacksonville, which the college used to buy a former charter school building near the Cecil campus to house the training institute.
City Council member Raual Arias, who sponsored that legislation, and Avendano told Jacksonville Today that the local government match is partially what persuaded state officials to provide the state investment for the Institute.
“The skilled trades are really in desperate need for available workforce, because the people who were in that workforce for the last 35 to 40 years are retiring,” Avendano said in an interview after the news conference. “And now we’re trying to get that (worker) pipeline going again.”
Welding, HVAC and electrical skills are transferable to multiple industries, Avendano says. And growing the institute at the Cecil Center would allow FSCJ to make the maritime industry a focus.
The campus is next door to Cecil Commerce Center, as well as the Cecil Airport and Spaceport operated by the Jacksonville Aviation Authority. In recent years, aerospace companies like The Boeing Co., the corporate aircraft maker Otto Aerospace and aerospace prototype testing group Hermeus have expanded or launched operations and Cecil.
Avendano says growing a skilled workforce pipeline nearby will benefit students and those companies.
“We’re like any other business — location, location, location,” he said. “So the closer we are to those businesses, the better opportunity to train their already incumbent workers. But then train new students to go into those fields.”
The $23 million announcement Monday comes from a slew of grant programs, including Florida’s Defense Reinvestment Grant Program and Florida Defense Support Commission Grant Program.
According to DeSantis, the dollars will support the growth of Florida’s defense industrial base, which employs more than 900,000 people.
Money for Cecil Spaceport and more
The $5 million for a large rocket motor test stand at Cecil Spaceport comes from the Florida Department of Transportation’s Spaceport Improvement Program. The state and Jacksonville-area elected officials hope the dollars for the spaceport lead other aerospace companies to start or expand operations at the facility on Jacksonville’s Westside.
Over the last several years, local and state officials have been pushing to grow both Cecil Airport and Spaceport. City Council President Nick Howland and state. Rep. Wyman Duggan sponsored legislation at the local and state levels to require the airport authority to create an economic development plan for Cecil that includes the spaceport.
Howland also persuaded the City Council to amend the airport’s budget to set aside $10 million for a proposed facility expansion of FSCJ’s aviation mechanics program at Cecil.
The budget moves concerned officials at the airport authority and nearly led to a lawsuit between the airport authority and the city, but was ultimately settled through negotiations outside the court system.
The FSCJ president said Monday that its aviation mechanics program is at capacity and has a weighting list out to fall 2027. Avendano says the college could use a small slice of the $7 million to bolster that program, but that has not been determined.
Duggan, who is currently serving as Florida House speaker until his state House term ends in November, called the Cecil airport and spaceport facility the city’s biggest singular economic asset.
“We have the opportunity here at Cecil to become the next Silicon Valley but for commercial space (industry), ” Duggan said Monday.
See a full list of the projects statewide included in the $23 million announcement here.
