EDITORIAL: Work finally getting under way on Albany State University fine arts center

To say that Tuesday’s event at Albany State University has been a long-awaited one is the epitome of understatement.

After a decade of frustrating starts and stops, a team of shovels finally turned soil on a new fine arts center at ASU. After stalling numerous times in the state budgeting process, the $19.8 million in bonds needed for the center was included in the FY 2016 state budget. Tuesday morning, school officials, lawmakers and other dignitaries ceremoniously broke ground on the construction project that will replace the aging Holley Hall.

Albany State President Art Dunning; the Dougherty County legislative delegation of Sen. Freddie Powell Sims and Reps. Winfred Dukes, Darrel Ealum and Gerald Greene; Chancellor Hank Huckaby, and all the others at the state and local levels who worked to make this effort a reality had reason to celebrate. But the real winners with the construction of this facility will be the ones it serves — the students who attend the new Albany State University.

“This has been a long time coming, and I didn’t think I would live to see this day,” Dunning said Tuesday at the event. “We endured some fits and starts, but this will be the cornerstone of the new Albany State University. This is a proud, proud moment for us all.”

While the fine arts center won’t include the auditorium for the performing arts that was originally part of the project, it will provide much needed space for students to learn. At 81,500 square feet, it will remove many of the constraints that students and instructors have been enduring in the aging 33,000-square-foot Holley Hall.

The result will be a better educational climate and a better opportunity for ASU students to learn, improve their skills and take advantage of their talents.

In many ways, that consideration — the students — got lost over the years as politics and controversy played too large a role in the project. Thankfully, that should be behind us now, and the focus can be trained specifically on the students and how they will benefit from this facility.

For this fine arts center, a short race unexpectedly turned into a marathon, but the finish line is in sight. And once it is reached, ASU’s students will find a much-needed new starting line for their lives and careers.

Certainly, that is something worth celebrating.

— The Albany Herald Editorial Board