CLARKESVILLE — Habersham County officials paused briefly Tuesday afternoon to celebrate the beginning of work on the county’s new administration building.
Located beside the Ruby Fulbright Aquatic Center on Jacobs Way off Toccoa Highway, the new facility will centralize most county services that are not related to the judicial system in 28,500 square feet of space.
With the sound of heavy equipment in the background, Habersham County Commission Chairman Victor Anderson discussed with AccessWDUN the significance of beginning work on the project.
“For many years, since before we built the new courthouse, the county administration and the county commission have identified this as a project that needed to be done for our citizens,” Anderson said. “It’s a momentous occasion for us that we’re actually getting to the point of breaking ground, and getting it underway so that we can have a facility that for the next 30, 40, even 50 years will be a landmark and a service to the taxpayers and the citizens.”
Offices will be located on three floors of the building, while there will be a mechanical mezzanine on the top level. Price tag for the project is just less than $6 million, with anticipated completion in 2019.
Currently, county offices are spread out between the current administration building (old courthouse) on the square, the two buildings of the Habersham EMC Annex on Ga. 115 West, and the Human Services Park on Scoggins Drive in Demorest.
Several of those buildings are difficult to navigate, especially for older residents.
“This building will be much more user friendly, not just compared to the old building on the square – the old courthouse building – but the fact that it’s going to be virtually a one-stop shop for county services for the taxpayers and citizens,” Anderson said. “We’ll have our tax commissioner, tax assessors, our building and planning departments all under one roof. Plans are to have environmental services, so when property owners want to build something and they need permitting to do that, there should only be one location from the county standpoint that they would have to go to take care of that. Now, there’s multiple locations.”
The new administration building also will have a drive-up window for the tax commissioner’s office, just as at the current facility in the Habersham EMC Annex.
“It will be county-owned, not leased,” Anderson said. “It will be an asset that will grow equity for the county and the taxpayers.”
