Leaders and dignitaries from throughout the CSRA, including Richmond County and Aiken County Sheriffs Gino Brantley and Marty Sawyer, joined the City of North Augusta in celebrating its new public safety headquarters on Georgia Avenue.
A North Augusta trolley shuttled attendees from a designated parking area in the lot of the old Georgia Avenue Food Lion, completing an already dense crowd of local residents and city officials. The ceremony started with remarks by North Augusta Mayor Briton Williams, public safety director Chief Junior Johnson and an invocation by police chaplain John Hardy blessing the new building.
Afterwards, guests were invited on a tour of the new facility, beginning with the courtroom.
Plans for the revamped facility first appeared before the North Augusta City Council in fall of 2020, originally intended for development near the previous headquarters on East Buena Vista Avenue. In August of 2021, the council voted to rezone for public use what would become the new building’s current location, a five-acre parcel that was once the site of the Seven Gables Inn, which burned down in 2008. The city broke ground on the headquarters, funded with a one-cent local option sales tax, in February of 2023.
“This facility is a game changer for our community. Public safety is one of the main foundations of any community that is strong,” said Mayor Williams in the ceremony’s opening address, noting that because of the penny tax, the development didn’t put the city in debt and no millage increase was required of the taxpayers. “Twenty-five percent of the people are not even residents of Aiken County, they’re visitors. So think all the people coming here for the Masters, all the people coming here for Peach Jam, anyone visiting through that spends money, a penny has gone to pay for this building.”
The two-story, 39,000 square foot facility boasts a larger dispatch center, a new crime lab, a weight room, expanded criminal investigation offices and even an emergency room to serve as both a training space and an emergency operations command center.
“If Hurricane Helne were to happen today, we would be running an operation from this room,” said North Augusta Public Safety Lt. Billy Hultman, noting that while operating from the former headquarters, officers and personnel would have to “makeshift run” emergency operations from the municipal building on Palmetto Terrace. “This was actually designed to double as an EOC, so it’s got all the data connections, everything we need to monitor everything.”
The new North Augusta Public Safety Headquarters, both the police station and the courthouse, are located at 1210 Georgia Ave.
Skyler Andrews is a reporter covering business for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
