Monday evening, the Lowndes County School District Board of Trustees selected a site for its new career-tech center.
Finally.
To say that the decision has been a long time coming is an understatement. The site selection, much like the plans to fund the facility, have been a series of starts and stops, marked by territorial squabbling, poor communication and delays that will mean the new facility will not likely open until the beginning of the 2017-18 school year.
Talk of the need for a centralized vocational center that would serve students from the county’s three high schools began in 2012. Now, after two bond issues required to provide the funding and consideration of four possible sites, the board settled on the one piece of property that had been the most likely site since the beginning.
By a 3-2 vote, the board chose the site along North Lehmberg Road near Lowndes Funeral Home, which — along with a parcel near Highway 50 and Highway 12 — had been identified as suitable sites as far back as November 2013.
Although all of the possible sites — which also included two parcels on Highway 45 north of Columbus and the city-owned Lee Middle School property on Military Road — would have required some site preparation before construction could begin, the North Lehmberg Road site is the most “shovel-ready,” — a “clean” lot with sewer and water already in place.
We pause, briefly, to say that we regret the county and Columbus Municipal School District could not have found a way to make the Lee Middle School property work. Not only would that site have been the most accessible of the sites considered, it would have also served to revitalize this key part of the city even as the adjoining Highway 45 corridor and 18th Avenue continue to show impressive growth.
Of course, there are always “what ifs?” associated with these types of projects and while the merits of each site can still be debated, the important thing now is to move on with the project.
By the end summer of 2017, the $11 million career-tech center should be near completion and students will begin taking classes.
We look forward to that day and the opportunities the new center will create for students in this new age of industry and manufacturing.
It’s been a long, often frustrating journey to get to this point.
Let’s hope the rest of the project proceeds without the delays and debates that have marked the process up until now.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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