Old State Patrol building prepared for demolition
By SARAH FAY CAMPBELL
sarah@newnan.com
The long-vacant Georgia State Patrol building on Temple Avenue at Hospital Road in Newnan will soon be coming down.
Coweta County crews have been out this week preparing the building for demolition.
But the old building couldn’t be torn down until the new public safety radio tower was built, as the tower attached to the building was still being used.
The new tower went into operation in 2011.
“It’s been our plans for quite a while to remove that building,” said County Administrator Theron Gay this week.
County crews have been busy with other projects, but now is the perfect time for the demolition.
“When the weather turns wet and cold, we can do things like that when we can’t do other projects,” Gay said of the demolition. “Since the tower has been ready, we haven’t had a cold, wet period” that kept county crews from doing other projects, he said.
The county will salvage anything salvageable, Gay said.
But the building itself isn’t much good. “The building is so old,” Gay said. The county has looked at using it for other things, and “it just doesn’t work well. That is why we moved the GSP out of that location.”
However, “it’s a great piece of property there to be able to utilize,” Gay said.
In addition to the main building, the nearby shed will also be removed. There are no plans currently for the large parking lot that was formerly the test driving course for the old driver’s license office.
“We don’t know what we are going to do with that,” Gay said of the parking lot. “There is a little roadway through there. We’ll make sure the road is in good shape,” Gay said.
As for future uses of the property, which sits between the county’s Powell Library and a Rite Aid store and across from the Temple Avenue recreation complex, “we haven’t discussed what we are going to do,” Gay said.
The building was the long-time home of the GSP and the Department of Motor Vehicle Services — where thousands of Cowetans got their driver’s licenses and took their driving tests. The DMVS became the Department of Driver Services in 2006.
When the GSP moved to the new Turkey Creek Road location, the DDS also moved to its current location in the Eastgate shopping center on Bullsboro Drive.
