Washburn Tech Opens $6.25M Manufacturing Hub in Repurposed Kmart

Washburn Tech's new North Topeka campus is more than a ribbon-cutting — it is a live case study in how postsecondary institutions are repurposing dead retail real estate into hands-on advanced manufacturing training, financed by pandemic-era stimulus dollars. For EdTech and higher-ed leaders, the project shows that the next frontier of technical education is often physical infrastructure and employer-embedded credentialing rather than software alone.

Washburn University Institute of Technology (Washburn Tech) formally opened its North Topeka campus on Monday, August 10, 2026, completing a roughly 20-month transformation of a vacant 90,000-square-foot former Kmart store at 2240 NW Tyler into an advanced manufacturing training hub. The new Washburn Tech North facility is built around a manufacturing training center intended to supply skilled workers to some of Kansas's fastest-growing industries — a direct response to the state's persistent shortage of qualified manufacturing and industrial-maintenance talent.

“

The State of Kansas contributed $6.25 million, a figure combining direct appropriations with a grant funded by the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA), the federal stimulus package passed during the pandemic.

The project is notable less for its architecture than for its financing structure and timing. Washburn University purchased the former Kmart building in December 2024, and renovations began in Spring 2025. The State of Kansas contributed $6.25 million, a figure combining direct appropriations with a grant funded by the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA), the federal stimulus package passed during the pandemic. A further $1.6 million in federal funding is being used to purchase training equipment. Washburn president Dr. JuliAnn Mazachek framed the investment as "mission critical," noting that the combination of public dollars and "generous private support" would prepare students for "in-demand, high-paying careers" while giving Kansas manufacturers the workforce they need.

For the education technology and workforce development community, Washburn Tech North is a case study in several converging trends. First, it illustrates how ARPA-era State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds are still being deployed years after the law's passage, now converting into durable physical assets — classrooms, labs, and training floors — rather than short-term relief. Second, it demonstrates the growing appeal of adaptive reuse in postsecondary technical education. A big-box retail shell that lost its original purpose as e-commerce hollowed out brick-and-mortar is being repurposed as a high-bay, hands-on learning environment, a model that is both cost-effective relative to new construction and strategically appealing because such spaces often sit near the working-class neighborhoods whose residents technical colleges seek to serve.

The program mix reinforces the employer-alignment thesis. Washburn Tech North will house Industrial Machine/Maintenance Technology and the Federation for Advanced Manufacturing (FAME) program, along with additional offerings. FAME is significant because it is an employer-sponsored apprenticeship model in which students split time between classroom instruction and paid, on-the-job training with partner manufacturers — an earn-and-learn structure that lowers barriers to entry and ties curriculum directly to real production-floor skills. By co-locating FAME with a dedicated manufacturing training center, Washburn is positioning itself as a regional workforce intermediary, not merely a degree-granting institution.

The economic stakes are concrete. Kansas's manufacturing sector has struggled to fill skilled maintenance, machining, and automation roles as an aging workforce retires and younger workers gravitate toward four-year academic pathways. Programs like those at Washburn Tech North compress the time-to-credential relative to a bachelor's degree and target occupations that often pay well above the state's median wage. The $7.85 million in combined state and federal investment — before private contributions — signals that policymakers view technical education as a workforce development lever with a measurable return, a stance that has gained bipartisan traction as reshoring and industrial-automation investments increase demand for technicians.