Lavonia Puts Cannery Renovations on Hold

The City of Lavonia is holding off on a plan to renovate the historic cannery.

At their regular meeting Monday evening, the Lavonia City Council and Mayor Ralph Owens heard from city manager Gary Fesperman on progress with the cannery renovations.

Fesperman said Lavonia had applied for two grants to pay for the work, but there have been setbacks.

“We ran into several snags as far as grants,” he told the board. “We had applied for a $10,000 grant through the Watson Foundation in Athens and that grant was not approved. There were a tremendous amount of applications for the funding and some of the applications were just more needy than ours was so we didn’t make it on that grant.”

Fesperman said the City plans to re-apply for that grant the next time it is offered. That was one of two grants the City had applied for to help fund the cost of renovations, Fesperman said.  However, he said the City also ran into issues with the second grant.

“And the Stabilization grant through DCA, there were so many requirements on that grant that we decided we could not meet all of them so we did away with that grant application. The cannery renovation will remain on hold until we can get some additional funding,” Fesperman said.

Last year, the City took over ownership of the Cannery from the Franklin County School Board.

Under that agreement, Lavonia will take care of the operation and maintenance of the building, however, the FFA will continue to use it.

Plans also call for renovations to the front offices, which will be used by the Lavonia Carnegie Library.