KILGORE — After years of work, the ribbon was cut Thursday on the Torrence Health Science Education Center in Kilgore, which will educate and train the next generation of healthcare professionals in East Texas.
The Torrence Center is the educational wing of the Roy H. Laird Health Science Center, which also includes the hospital operated by Christus Health. Construction on the almost 75,000-square-foot facility began in 2022 and features the Torrence Health Science Education Center and a new Christus Trinity Clinic family medicine facility and out-patient physical therapy location, which are adjacent to the Christus Good Shepherd Emergency Center.
The Torrence Health Science Education Center is a teaching and state-of-the-art lab space that is home to Kilgore College’s associate degree nursing, vocational nursing, physical therapy assistant and radiologic technology programs.
“This is an event that has been many, many years in the making,” City Manager Josh Selleck told the crowd gathered for Thursday’s ceremony. “It’s taken the entire community to pull this together. It took courage and vision to walk away from an existing, operating facility and to be willing to entrust so many diverse partners with this in the hopes that it would come to fruition.
“When this project started, it was a $13 million project. When COVID hit, construction costs rose and we had to rely on ETCOG (East Texas Council of Governments) to find a grant to really bring this together.”
Selleck thanked the large group of partners who helped make the hospital and education center project a reality, including the Laird family and the Roy H. Laird Foundation, the Kilgore College board of trustees and the Kilgore College Foundation, Mike Jenkins of KC, Clay Evers and city staff, the Kilgore City Council, the Torrence family, Christus Health administration and CEO Todd Hancock, the Kilgore Economic Development Corp. board, Gregg and Rusk County officials, SWEPCO, Harris Craig Architects and WRL General Contractors, which constructed the facility.
The new facility, at 1610 S. Henderson Blvd., will be ready for KC health science classes during the fall semester.
The project will include new classrooms and state-of-the-art lab facilities for KC’s health science programs on the south side of the complex as well as the expansion of Christus Good Shepherd’s footprint near the existing emergency center.
For more information about the Health Science programs at Kilgore College, visit www.kilgore.edu/health-sciences.
