The next few days are moving days for employees of the local department of social services, senior center and youth services as they transition from their old office spaces to their renovated spaces on the campus of the former Eaton Johnson Middle School.
Local officials gathered last week for a ribbon-cutting at the new facility, and County Manager Jordan McMillen said that it took a lot of work from a lot of entities to transform a former school building to a facility to serve the community.
McMillen thanked the county’s school board and county commissioners for helping to make the project a reality. “Putting a large, vacant school facility into reuse is always a challenge and…ultimately, we were able to take an existing facility in North Henderson and put it back into use. This was a win-win-win for the school board, the county as well as the city of Henderson,” he said.
“This new DSS facility is state-of-the-art and will allow our DSS to better meet the needs of our citizens. The facility includes areas for various units to work together, includes training spaces, conference rooms, adequate office space and storage space, interview rooms, youth and children observation rooms and play areas. We are very proud to introduce this facility to the public,” McMillen stated during remarks at Friday’s ribbon-cutting.
This is the first phase of renovation, and McMillen said additional space will be reused as well.
The facility is 102,700 square feet, and less than 41,000 square feet was involved in this part of the renovation project – 39,000 for DSS and 1,800 for youth services – that leaves more than half of the total space available for renovated. McMillen said the plan is to use most of that space.
There are plans to lease out the kitchen space as a commercial kitchen and space to house a Headstart facility.