The Fannin County Board of Education received architectural renderings of the newly proposed Transportation Facility and Staff Development Center during a called meeting Thursday, July 23.
If approved, the facilities will be built on the 35.75 acre property the board purchased from the United States Forest Service at a cost of $625,000 using SPLOST funds last August.
At this time, a survey of the property and a topography map have been completed.
The architect responsible for the presented renderings is Doug Breaux of Breaux & Associates, who has worked with Assistant Superintendent of Facilities and Operations Darren Danner on certain aspects the school system would like included with the project if completed.
The property was originally intended as a new home for the transportation department, however Danner later realized there was space available for another needed facility - a staff development center.
“Once we got our initial drawings of the Transportation Facility, we noticed we had all this space left over,” Danner said. “So we reached back out to Doug and his associates and pretty much told the what we were looking for and that was when the Staff Development Center became on this piece of property. So again, we’ve got the space to do so, so we reached out to them and gave them some guidelines to go by.”
The Transportation Facility would include bus maintenance areas, a training room and office space. The Staff Development Center would include a new board room, a training room and office space for a new central office.
The school system is still in the early stages of the project, and it is ultimately up to the board to decide whether one facility, both or neither are built.
“Once a decision is made, whether we’re going to build one, both or not any, hopefully it’s one or the two, but that is the board’s decision,” Danner said. “Once that decision is made we’re going to get engineers. We’ll start drilling to see what type of soil we got there, because that stuff has not been done yet, because there’s no need.”
Danner described the project as a Ford Crown Victoria stating, "We want a Crown Vic ... We’d love a Rolls Royce and all that type stuff, but in Fannin County we’ve never done that. We want something nice, and we want something very usable, but these elaborate type things, we’ve just never done that type of thing in Fannin County."
No action was taken on the project during the meeting, and the board will look over the project before any final decisions.