After being transformed by individuals and organizations that have given more than $4 million and community leaders who never gave up, a 104-year-old former school building on Claxton’s Main Street gleamed and sang with new life Thursday evening, rededicated as the Jack and Muriel Strickland Arts & Cultural Center.

Scheduled activities began at 4 p.m. with a reception and self-directed tours to see the auditorium, the downstairs museum space, which awaits a future installation by the Evans County Historical Society, and an upstairs art gallery already displaying paintings and other works by local artists. Then people filed into the auditorium twice, first at 5 p.m. for dedicatory service and speeches and, after a ribbon cutting on the front porch, a musical program at 6 p.m.

Certain things about the red-brick building, which first opened as Claxton High School in 1922, are really new, such as the elevator that makes the two-story structure Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant for current use, and the 250-plus replaced theater seats, many labeled with donor dedications. But other features, such as the original wood flooring, the balcony and certain key pieces of furniture, are old but have been newly stabilized and refinished.

Darin McCoy, county Probate Court judge and an Arts & Cultural Authority of Claxton & Evans County board member, made that point when, as master of ceremonies for the dedication, he introduced a “friend” to the crowd.

“I got to tell you really quick about my friend here,” McCoy said. “She looks pretty good. She’s 70 years old, she has had a very good cleaning and polishing this week. This podium was donated to this building in 1956 by the Claxton High School graduating class of that year.”

Originally the high school for white students, the building later became a desegrated school, and – replaced by a new high school behind it that has since been replaced by yet another – served elementary and finally, middle grades.

Another speaker, and also Arts & Cultural Authority member, Dr. Diane W. Holland, was the last principal of Claxton Middle School when it still used the building – and some added wings behind it – before a new middle school was also built at the site across town that is now the conjoined middle-and-high school campus.

The 1922 building has historical value for Holland, she said, because she taught fourth grade there from 1984 to 1992 “under the very capable leadership” of then-Principal “Joyce O. NeSmith, for whom this auditorium is named.”

Then Holland served as Claxton Middle School’s principal in the building from 1995 until 2012, before she moved to the new CMS with the rest of the faculty.

Demolition option

“In 2019 the building, because of its age, was no longer eligible for any federal or state funding,” was part of the history McCoy told. “The Board of Education had to decide what to do with this building. One of the options was demolition. An outcry came from the community, which led to a townhall meeting.”

Those who attended the meeting were “unanimous,” he said, in stating that the majority of Evans County residents wanted to see the building preserved.

So the Arts & Cultural Authority was created by joint resolution of the Evans County commissioners and Claxton City Council. But it has been a local government-created authority raising money almost entirely from private sources. A third arm of local government involved is the Evans County Board of Education, which retains ownership of the building but in 2021 approved a 50-year lease to the Arts & Cultural Authority.

‘When inflation hit’

During his keynote remarks, Adam Kennedy, executive director of the Development Authority of Claxton & Evans County and also chair of the Arts & Cultural Authority, described some of the struggles of the last three to four years. He noted that despite the early enthusiasm, when the costs of the proposed renovation became known, some people questioned whether developing an arts and cultural center was worth the expense to such a small community.

In an interview, he said that cost estimate started out at $2.7 million, but the total to this point has been about $4.3 million.

“Of course when inflation hit, the price increased, probably right at a million dollars,” Kennedy said. “But thanks to local, generous foundations, donors (he noted a display board of “inaugural donors” who gave a thousand dollars or more in the early going) but primarily the Strickland Foundation as our largest donor, it’s been great.”

The Strickland Foundation

That the center is named for Jack and Muriel Strickland is no wonder, since the George W. Strickland Jr. Foundation has reportedly given more than half of the money required to bring the project to this point. George W. “Jack” Strickland Jr. started Evans Concrete LLC, still a family-owned company, in 1948 in Daisy, east of Claxton.

Expanding to other Georgia towns, the concrete company came to own centralized sites in a number of them. It currently has 17 plant locations in Southeast Georgia, according to the company website. The Strickland Foundation has paid for, or been lead donor, in several other public projects in Evans County in recent years, from the new Claxton Police Department headquarters and the building in Hagan that serves as base for Ogeechee Technical College’s truck driving school to the roof on Veterans Community Center and playground equipment at the elementary school.

Kennedy thanked the Strickland heirs and a number of other donors from the stage. Some are recognized in aspects of the building, such as the Fries Foyer, named for the Claxton Poultry founding family.

Part of the building was also designed as the new home of the Development Authority and Claxton-Evans County Chamber of Commerce offices and has a board room for use of these and potentially other organizations.

Access to culture

But here was a development authority director talking about access to the arts.

“This project was never simply about saving an old building; it was about preserving a piece of Evans County’s identity,” Kennedy said. “It was about ensuring that future generations would have a place to gather, learn, create, perform and be inspired. …”

He went on to add that, “perhaps most importantly, this center was created to provide access. Not every child or family living in our community has the opportunity to travel regularly to large cities to experience live theater, concerts, art exhibits, educational programs and cultural events. This facility will bring these opportunities here.”

The Fox connection

Leigh Burns, director of community partnerships with Fox Gives, the nonprofit, charitable arm of the historic Fox Theatre in Atlanta, came to Claxton for the center’s opening. Fox Gives has provided $201,000 in a series of three grants over three years for the project, beginning with one that provided the elevator.

Two Claxton High School graduates – Osjha Anderson Domenicone, who was Miss Georgia 1999, and Chris Mitchell, who owns Pladd Dott Music in Statesboro and is a singer-songwriter and guitarist – as well as Mitchell’s wife Ashlee, also a vocalist, performed “folk Americana” numbers and some of Chris Mitchell’s originals on stage as the last phase of the opening celebration.