The city of Demorest and Habersham Chamber of Commerce cut the ribbon Tuesday night on Demorest’s new Municipal Conference Center and Court. The brief ceremony was held ahead of the evening’s regular council meeting on September 12.
Approximately two dozen people attended the ceremony with about a dozen remaining for the council meeting.
The city began renovating the old Demorest Elementary School auditorium this past spring shortly after city hall moved to the facility in March. This gives Demorest residents another facility they can use on the historic school campus. They have a new city hall, a refurbished gymnasium, the recently refurbished Brent Lee Moore Park, and now the conference center.
Bigger and better
The new conference center is where Demorest will now hold its city council meetings and court and, possibly too, its municipal elections.
The facility is significantly larger than the space previously used in the basement of the Demorest Fire Department on Ivy Street.
Demorest City Manager Mark Musselwhite compared his excitement over the new conference center to that of having a child. He said the city will have the facility for the next 40 to 50 years.
Musselwhite thanked the mayor and council for buying the historic school building. It was built in the 1940s as a public works project during the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. The school closed in June 2011. A church briefly occupied the building before the Demorest Development Authority bought it for $1 million in July 2022.
In addition to the larger renovated space, Demorest invested in a quality audio and video system to improve the audience’s experience, both in person and at home.
Sound quality in the old municipal building was a persistent problem. Council members would forget to turn on their microphones and, even when they did, the overhead speakers often weren’t working. Also, meetings livestreamed through cellphones and iPads, would drop due to poor Wi-Fi connectivity in the building.
The Demorest City Council addressed those issues by installing quality cameras and microphones in the new meeting room.
Test runs and movies
Staff and council members did a test run of the new audio/visual equipment on Monday to ensure a quality viewing experience from home. You can see the test run on the City of Demorest Facebook page.
Demorest resident and former city council candidate Amanda Mason said she likes the new facility.
“Much better. I can actually hear now,” she said.
Mason watched the test run the city performed Monday and added, “I could hear online yesterday.”
Lifelong Demorest resident Gail Moore was among those in attendance at Monday night’s ribbon-cutting and meeting.
“It’s absolutely gorgeous,” she said of the newly renovated facility.
Moore encouraged people to visit the new Municipal Conference Center.
“I hope more and more people will come and see what a delightful rendition we now have of a meeting room,” she said, envisioning the other possible uses for the converted school gymnasium. “This room can be used for so many things. It can even be used to have children’s movies.”
WATCH Sept. 12 Demorest City Council meeting
