Train Depot Renovation Earns City Award
The City of Lavonia is the recipient of the Silver Award of Excellence in Design for the Interior Renovation of the Historic Lavonia Depot.
The award is part of the Georgia Downtown Awards of Excellence Event, which is held annually in conjunction with the Georgia Downtown Conference.
Georgia Downtown Awards of Excellence recognize outstanding achievements in downtown development by communities, volunteers and hard-working downtown development professionals across the State.
Lavonia DDA director Marie Morse was notified in July that Lavonia was a finalist.
Morse said then she sent in several applications last spring in hopes the city would make the final cut.
Morse said, “Back in May, we were allowed the opportunity as a city, and as a Main Street city, to put in an application for an event, a program, a renovation, changing infrastructure, a historic restoration, something that we felt was note worthy that we had done in our city or that we had accomplished in our city. I actually sent in Festival of Authors as well as the interior renovation of the historic depot, and the event itself, the Centential Celebration.
Work on the depot took about three months to complete last fall at a cost to the city of about $248-thousand dollars and was completed in time to celebrate its 100th birthday.
But the renovation is really a restoration.
Working with the Georgia Mountains Regional Commission, workers uncovered decades of past renovations and brought the train depot back to the way it looked originally when it first opened in 1911.
Morse believes winning the Award for Excellence will help promote all that the City of Lavonia has to offer.
Morse said, “This is putting Lavonia front and center in front of a group of people who are here in Lavonia again. Then they’ll show the information, about the application and then, of course I sent pictures before, after, during, so people will see that and hopefully it will even be a place that they would want to visit.”
More than 50 applications were received for this year’s awards competition.
This year’s winners received recognition in four different categories including design, promotions, organization and economic development.