The life of the old Lowndes County Extension Building on Third Avenue North could be coming to an end soon.
County Administrator Ralph Billingsley asked the Lowndes County supervisors if he could go before the Columbus Historical Preservation Commission next Monday and make a presentation to tear the building down.
The supervisors voted unanimously to allow Billingsley to go before the commission, but District 1 Supervisor Harry Sanders wanted to make sure allowing Billingsley to do such does not mean the supervisors must go through with bringing the historic building to the ground.
“Even if we make a motion to send you to make a presentation to tear it down, and they approve tearing it down, we don’t have to go through with it,” Sanders asked.
Billingsley affirmed that the motion was only to make a presentation and that the board is not making an official decision one way or the other.
According to Billingsley, the county could use the space for more courthouse parking.
“We don’t have enough parking for the courthouse,” he said. “We have no use for the building. It’s old and run down.”
Billingsley said there were some informal discussions about tearing it down, but this is the first time it reached a formal board meeting.
“Since the extension building is now empty, it’d be natural to take that out and improve the parking,” he said.
The building, built in the 1940s, houses the Lowndes County office of the Mississippi State University Extension Center from the mid-1970s through 2011. The supervisors moved the office in June to the former Columbus-Lowndes Convention and Visitors Bureau at the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway Development Authority offices on Seventh Street North.
Railroad track construction
The Lowndes County Board of Supervisors unanimously voted Monday to temporarily close the railroad crossing at Co-op Road to allow for expansion of railroad tracks.
There are four railroad tracks that head north from Highway 82 to Co-op Road, and two of them stop around 1,000 feet short, according to Roger Bell, vice president of business development.
The closing will allow for construction and lengthening of the two unfinished tracks to go across the road.
“Basically what will happen is Co-op Road will dead end at the railroad track,” Bell said.
Sanders affirmed that only the crossing will close and not the road.
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