Colorado Mountain College Purchases Rifle Property for Trade Hub

The building sits near Airport Road in south Rifle, a quiet stretch of land waiting for a purpose. It’s just a structure right now, empty and silent, but Colorado Mountain College sees it as the future of vocational training for Garfield County.

Here’s the thing though: the narrative that you need a four-year degree to succeed is getting a serious update. CMC has purchased this property with the explicit goal of turning it into a hub for hands-on trade education. They aren’t just adding a class or two; they are planning a massive renovation to house labs for HVAC, auto mechanics, and eventually electrician programs. The timeline? Classes could start as early as 2027.

“You certainly don’t need an associate’s degree to be successful,” Tinker Duclo, Vice President and Campus Dean of CMC’s Rifle campus, told reporters. “It does help to get a headstart on the trade you’ve chosen.”

That’s a bold claim for a community still largely obsessed with the traditional university path. But the data supports the pivot. Interest in trade schools is growing across the county, and CMC is responding by converting the new building into multiple classrooms. The easternmost section will become a dedicated HVAC lab — a huge space where technicians can actually work on their skills, not just read about them in a textbook.

And that matters because the local economy needs these skills. Right now, automechanic classes happen at Rifle High School, where students earn college credit alongside their diploma. But that setup is limited. Moving those classes to the new Airport Road location allows for specialization. The plan is to renovate section by section, prioritizing the HVAC lab first, then moving the auto mechanics operations into the renovated space.

Duclo notes that they are working on curricula for ADAS, or advanced driver assist systems. Since those tech-heavy systems are being put into cars, the training needs to be tech-associated as well. It’s not just wrench-turning anymore; it’s diagnostics and software.

Local businesses are watching closely. Rifle Mayor Clint Hostettler, who has been a proponent of CMC since he began on city council eight years ago, is already looking at how he can plug in. He’s a licensed master electrician with around 30 years of experience, and he wants to be part of an electrical apprentice program if it launches.

“There’s nothing official yet, but if they start an electrical apprentice program, I want to be a part of it,” Hostettler said. “Hopefully I’d even be one of the teachers.”

His logic is simple: it’s a career starter. It gets kids excited about the construction field. You go to work and school at the same time. You could be working for Hostettler or another electrical contractor while learning, which is how apprenticeships should be. He believes in a school model that delivers a diploma and a job at the end of it.

This isn’t just about education; it’s about retention. When students can learn a trade right here in Rifle, without having to commute to Glenwood Springs or Aspen for every technical module, the local workforce strengthens. The college is reaching out to local businesses to help shape these curricula, ensuring what’s taught is what’s needed on the job site.

Picture this: a student in 2028, standing in that new HVAC lab, wrench in hand, learning to fix the very systems that keep our homes warm during a Western Slope winter. That’s the promise of the Airport Road property. It’s a shift from theory to practice, from classroom to车间.

The renovations will happen in phases. The first part will likely be ready for HVAC classes in the new year of 2027. The rest will follow. It’s a slow build, but it’s a deliberate one. And for the folks in Garfield County looking for a way out of the debt-and-degree cycle, it’s a new kind of promise.