EDITORIAL: Long wait for Albany State University students will soon be over

After 10 years of repeated hopes and disappointments, a badly needed multipurpose center for Albany State University is finally on the way.

Gov. Nathan Deal, who became the first governor to visit the ASU campus since the Flood of 1994, said in his remarks Tuesday: “Education always eats up the largest part of the budget and we’ve spent more on education than any governor in the past 50 years. It pleases me that we were able to include $19.8 million in funding for a new fine arts center at your fine institution.”

The funding for the $19.8 million in state bonds was inked in along with the overall $21.6 billion in state spending for the upcoming fiscal year as Deal conducted signed of the state spending plan Monday on campus at Albany State.

No doubt there was great relief when, as state Sen. Freddie Powell Sims observed, the ink was “finally dry” on the state budget plan that included the project.

“We are so pleased to have the governor here to allow us to host this budget signing on the campus of Albany State,” Sims said. “We are pleased to stand with you today as you sign this budget.”

Indeed, there were smiles all around at what ASU President Art Dunning described as a “watershed moment” for the university.

The politics of how the center funding was successfully guided through budget waters that were every bit as choppy as they had been for the past decade aside, the winners are the ones who should have been the focus all along — students who will study at Albany State. We strongly commend Sims, Dunning, the House delegation, the governor and the Board of Regents for their efforts in making this a reality for the students who will benefit in the coming years.

It will still be some time before the structure is in place to alleviate the crowded Holley Hall that has been overburdened for at least a decade, but the promise on the horizon is that a students soon will have the needed facilities in which to learn and excel.

Originally conceived as a fine arts center that would include an auditorium for the performing arts, the 81,500-square-foot structure will have an expanded purpose. In addition to fine arts, it is tabbed to be used by ASU’s English, mass communications and modern languages departments as well. All of those programs are currently crowded into the aging Holley Hall, at 33,000 square feet about 40 percent of the size of the planned facility.

While the performance auditorium’s omission was a disappointment, as Dunning noted last fall, something that was never possessed could not be counted as lost.

“This will give us much needed teaching and learning space that we currently do not have and will help us fulfill the core mission of the university,” Dunning said in an interview with The Herald last September. “That part kind of got lost in the performance piece.”

For years, it also has been lost in the political and controversial pieces, including the issues with the donation by the Ray Charles Foundation. But now, the long wait and disappointments are over. And those who should benefit — ASU students — soon will.

— The Albany Herald Editorial Board