On July 4, 2011, Greg Andrews declared his office’s independence from its cramped quarters at the county courthouse.
Then the tax assessor/collector, Andrews used the holiday, which fell on Monday that year, to move those operations to the administration building on Main Street.
“We never stopped business,” Andrews recalled to The Dispatch on Wednesday. “We continued business until Friday at 5 in (the courthouse) and resumed business at 8 a.m. (Tuesday) in the administration building.”
At the time, Andrews and his staff had plenty of space in their new digs.
“Over time, the space is gone again,” he said.
The board of supervisors took steps Wednesday to remedy that, entering an agreement to purchase the Golden Triangle Development LINK office building at 1102 Main St., across from the administration building. By fall 2025, it will be the new home for the tax assessor’s office and possibly other county functions.
“The eventual plan would be to have some shared space there for the supervisors,” Board President and District 2 Supervisor Trip Hairston told The Dispatch after the meeting. “Right now, we only have two supervisors who have dedicated office space. This would allow us to have a place for supervisors to have files or do some things like that.”
Supervisors Jeff Smith and Leroy Brooks, of District 4 and 5, respectively, keep offices in an auxiliary building on the courthouse grounds.
Contingent on a pending appraisal, the county will purchase the LINK building for $700,000, to be paid over three equal annual installments beginning Oct. 15, 2025. The county, in the meantime, will put up $10,000 in earnest money.
In addition to the two-story, 6,400 square-foot office space, the county will also get the adjacent lot next to the AT&T building, which it plans to use for parking.
The LINK offices have been in the Main Street building since the industrial recruitment organization’s founding in 2003. The building also housed the Columbus-Lowndes Chamber of Commerce until June, when the Chamber broke into an independent organization from the LINK and moved into shared office space with the Columbus-Lowndes Convention and Visitors Bureau.
With service contracts now with Lowndes, Oktibbeha and Clay counties, the LINK has broken ground on a slightly larger, more centralized facility at the Golden Triangle Regional Airport.
CEO Joe Max Higgins said construction is expected to finish by July, at which point the county could move into the current LINK space. But if it lingers past October 2025, he said the LINK would pay the county rent to remain in its current building until the new one is complete.
“I think John Q. Six-Pack has known we were going to move for months, if not a year,” Higgins told The Dispatch. “We had four or five people, not counting the county, who were looking at our building. Some of them were investors who were looking at it to do rental offices. … Ironically, several months ago Greg was over here (discussing) tax numbers for all the industries, and he asked, ‘What are you going to do with this building?’”
Hairston, he said, later came and asked the same question.
“Greg had some needs and (the supervisors) had some needs,” Higgins said. “Together it just made sense.”
In 2023, the county tax assessor and collector split into separate offices, with Andrews elected to remain assessor and Kalee Talley elected as collector.
Under the new arrangement, Andrews’ staff of seven, along with five contractors that work with the assessor’s office and rent office space from the county, will move to the old LINK.
The tax collector’s office will remain in the administration building, where residents will continue to pay their vehicle tags.
“It fits in well with the architecture of the administration building,” Hairston said of the LINK office. “I think the county will get good use out of it.”
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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