IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Top Gwinnett County stories from Jan. 11-17

“The present location of the Confederate monument may result in additional acts of vandalism and create a public safety concern for the City of Lawrenceville and Gwinnett County,” the commission’s proposed resolution states. “Now, therefore, be it resolved by the Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners that the Confederate monument be removed from the grounds of the Historic Courthouse Square in Lawrenceville and relocated to an appropriate storage facility to be determined by County staff for its protection and preservation until such time as receipt of further direction from the Court or until the lawsuit is resolved.”

The monument first became the target of vandals in June in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis following an encounter with police, an incident which prompted Black Lives Matter protests in Lawrenceville and elsewhere across the country. That prompted Whiteside to file a lawsuit against the county to get a judge to declare the monument a public nuisance and order its removal from the square.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans then filed a motion to intervene in the fall and assert a counterclaim designed to prevent the monument’s removal. The organization was granted permission to intervene and there is now a debate in court over ownership of the monument.

The monument was donated by descendants of Confederate veterans, but the historic courthouse grounds are a county park site — so the marker stands on county property.

The commission’s resolution states the monument was vandalized for a second time on Thanksgiving Day.

County Commissioner Kirkland Carden said he was limited in what he could say about the resolution because of the legal battle. When he was running for his seat on the commission last year, Carden circulated petitions to have the monument removed and got about 2,000 signatures.

“It is time to remove this monument of hate that has been a stain on Gwinnett County since it was erected in 1993,” Carden said. “Gwinnett has always strived to be a welcoming and inclusive world-class community. Removing this monument is a step in the right direction and it is fitting that we will vote to do so the day after we celebrate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.”

The monument would be moved to an undisclosed location, Carden said.

Gwinnett’s historic restoration and preservation board and the Lawrenceville City Council have each called on commissioners to remove the monument from the historic courthouse grounds. Former District Attorney Danny Porter, as well as his successor, current DA Patsy Austin-Gatson have also called for the monument to be removed from the square.

If the commissioners approve the resolution, the monument would have to be removed and put into storage within 30 days.

"There was an alleged probation violation where it was alleged that Mr. Kramer texted an alleged image of an unclothed adolescent," District Attorney Patsy Austin-Gatson said. "He has been released and the matter is pending investigation."

Kramer has had multiple run-ins with the criminal justice system in Gwinnett over the years. He took an Alford Plea in 2013 on child molestation charges, allowing him to plead guilty to the charges but still maintain his innocence.

In recent years, however, Kramer gained new notoriety for his involvement in a bizarre computer trespassing case that involved himself, former District Attorney Danny Porter, former Superior Court Judge Kathryn Schrader, a private investigator and another man hired by the investigator. 

Schrader hired the private investigator, TJ Ward, who brought in Kramer and the other man, Frank Karic, after she suspected Porter was hacking her computer. Porter denied hacking the judge's computer.

Karic installed a Shark Tap device on Schrader's computer which Kramer allegedly used to monitor activity on the computer.

Schrader, Ward, Karic and Kramer were each charged with computer trespassing. Ward, Karic and Kramer each took plea deals, with Kramer entering another Alford Plea. Schrader went on trial, but that ended in a mistrial, and she is awaiting a retrial.

Investigators looking into the computer trespassing case also allegedly discovered what prosecutors claimed was a lewd photo of a child on Kramer's computer. 

An attorney for Kramer claimed at the time that it was an artists photograph.

GCPS announced earlier this week it planned to move from in-person class to digital learning Jan. 19-22.

The current GCPS winter sports are basketball, wrestling, and swimming and diving. Attendance had been limited to 150 fans or less except for swimming and diving, which did not permit spectators.

GCPS spring sports events, all outdoor, begin with tennis on Jan. 25. No decision has been made on attendance of those events, but the goal is permitting more than parents in the stands.

“My hope is for the spring we open it up very much like we did in football with about 30% capacity (for soccer and lacrosse) and softball should mimic baseball, so the folks that need to watch ball games can watch ball games,” GCPS athletic director Ed Shaddix said.

“Last week, Mr. Gary voluntarily asked to withdraw his nomination from the Water and Sewage Authority and he will not be serving,” Matt Blakely said. “Commissioner Carden nominated Mr. Gary because of his expertise in development and believed that expertise would be useful for the county during this period of transition.”

Gary’s appointment evoked memories of a time when the county commission was mired in scandals that brought down several of its members and lead to criminal prosecutions against some of them.

Gary, in particular, was tied up in a scandal surrounding Lasseter and her son, John Fanning. The developer pleaded guilty in 2012 to paying $30,000 in casino chips to Fanning in exchange for Lasseter voting in favor of approval for a controversial $4 million solid waste transfer station proposed in the Dacula area.

Gary had a personal ownership interest in the proposed station, and accused Lasseter during a federal court hearing of telling him he had to pay her $30,000 to secure her support of the project.

The former planning commissioner was sentenced in August 2013 to two years in prison and three years of supervised release.

“Commissioner Carden was aware of Mr. Gary’s past when he nominated him,” Blakely said. “However, as a Christian and proponent of restorative justice, Commissioner Carden believes that Mr. Gary has grown as a person. We wish Mr. Gary and his family the best moving forward.”

Republicans in Georgia, including members of the state legislature, have been calling for changes after experiencing losses in the 2020 election cycle. In that cycle, the Democratic Party had big wins in the state in the presidential, 7th Congressional District and both U.S. Senate races.

“I was on a Zoom call the other day and I said, ‘I’m like a dog with a bone. I will not let them end this session without changing some of these laws,’ “ O’Lenick said. “They don’t have to change all of them, but they’ve got to change the major parts of them so that we at least have a shot at winning.”

O’Lenick — who referred to 2020 as a “terrible elections cycle” during the GOP meeting — outlined several changes pertaining to elections that she would like to see made in Georgia. Several of them pertain to how Georgians can cast ballots ahead of election day.

One of them is having the state require up to 21 days of early voting — officially called advance-in-person voting — with one mandatory Saturday voting day and one mandatory Sunday voting day. County elections officials should be free to set their own hours on the Sunday voting, she said.

Two even bigger changes would center around absentee voting in Georgia, however.

One would be a partial rollback of no excuse absentee-by-mail voting. Georgia has had no excuse absentee voting for more than a decade and its popularity exploded in 2020 as officials at the Georgia Secretary of State’s office pushed it as a safe alternative for voters who were concerned about waiting in line to vote amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

O’Lenick suggested only certain population groups should be allowed to ask for an absentee ballot without giving a reason for the request.

“The absentee-by-mail, you exclude the elderly and infirm (from needing an excuse), and everyone else would have to have an excuse,” she said. “We took out a few years ago absentee-by-mail for cause, so you don’t have to say a cause. You just say, ‘It’s not convenient. I’m just not going to go (on election day).’”

The other change related to absentee ballots that O’Lenick is advocating would entail banning absentee ballot drop boxes, which was a new option introduced in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The ballot drop boxes have to go,” she said. “I’ve had an attorney on Jan. 5 that was sent by the (Republican National Committee), two of them, that stood outside Gwinnett (election) headquarters and all they did was photograph people dropping absentee ballots in that box that’s right, as you’re looking at the office, to the left of the front door.

“They did not see one person that was dropping in one ballot at a time, and they came to me and said, ‘Alice, why in the world do you have this here?’ And, I said, ‘Well, A, I didn’t put it there (and), B, I complained about it.’”

At the local level, where her role as elections board chairwoman gives her greater influence, O’Lenick said she wants to take a look at Gwinnett County’s voter registration rolls.

“As chairman, I am going to push that Gwinnett County update the voter registration rolls to make sure that people who live out of the state are no longer on the Gwinnett County rolls,” O’Lenick said. “We don’t seem to have a lot of dead people on our rolls, but we’re going to check that out too.

“We’re also going to check out whether people are legal or not. We did have in our provisional ballots — normally we have anywhere from two to five people who are non-citizens that think because they have a driver’s license then they can come and vote. This time around, for the senatorial races, we had much more than that.”

O’Lenick also wants the legislature to address voter rolls as well.

“We need to make sure that we put pressure on our elected officials, both in the state House and the state Senate, that election laws will be changed,” she said. “I have offered my opinions. My No. 1 is the rolls. We have to make sure only people who live in Gwinnett County or live in Georgia are on the voter registration rolls.”

The county’s elections board is made up of two representatives of the Gwinnett county Republican Party and two representatives of the Gwinnett County Democratic Party as well as a fifth member who is chosen by the rest of the board. It is set to hold its next meeting at 6 p.m. on Tuesday at gwinnettgov.webex.com/gwinnettgov/onstage/g.php?MTID=ed57454b04ae94345c65d29ef42571087.

Publix officials said eligible individuals can make appointments beginning today (Jan. 15), using the online reservation system at publix.com/covidvaccine. Officials said vaccinations will start Jan. 16.

“At Publix, we know how important it is to be there, especially in times of need,” Publix CEO Todd Jones said. “We are grateful for the opportunity to provide this critical service to the Georgia community.”

According to a press release from Publix, vaccinations are provided to eligible individuals, by appointment only, while supplies last, and at no cost to the individual. Customers with health insurance will need to bring their insurance card to their scheduled appointment.

Medicare members should bring their red, white and blue Medicare Part B card. Customers without health insurance will need to provide their driver’s license or Social Security number.

Publix Pharmacy will administer the vaccine at the following locations in Gwinnett County:

• Dacula: Store No. 803, Dacula Village, 720 Dacula Road

• Duluth: Store No. 505, Promenade at Pleasant Hill, 1625 Pleasant Hill Road, Suite 200

• Duluth: Store No. 585, Duluth Station, 2750 Buford Highway

• Lawrenceville: Store No. 612, Sugarloaf Crossing, 4850 Sugarloaf Parkway

• Lawrenceville: Store No. 859, Village Shoppes of Sugarloaf, 3370 Sugarloaf Parkway

• Lawrenceville: Store No. 863, The Shops at Huntcrest, 1030 Old Peachtree Road NW

• Lawrenceville: Store No. 1078, The Village Shoppes at Simonton, 930 New Hope Road

• Lilburn: Store No. 564, Five Forks Corner Shopping Center, 4045 Five Forks Trickum Road SW

• Loganville: Store No. 789, Grayson Village, 2715 Loganville Highway SW

• Snellville: Store No. 508, Presidential Market Center, 1905 Scenic Highway N., Suite 4000

• Snellville: Store No. 539, Publix at Centerville, 3550 Centerville Highway, Suite 201

• Sugar Hill: Store No. 596, Sugar Hill Corners. 5885 Cumming Highway

• Suwanee: Store No. 615, McGinnis Crossing, 1000 Peachtree Industrial Blvd.

Getting the vaccine was less of an anxiety-inducing moment and more of a relief to Beckett.

“I want to try to get on with life,” he said. “Hopefully, it will get better in another year or two.”

Many people in Beckett’s age group have not been nearly as lucky as he was when it comes to getting an appointment for the vaccine. There are more Gwinnettians who want a COVID-19 vaccine than there are doses available to vaccinate them, according to a spokesman for the Gwinnett, Newton and Rockdale Health Departments.

Georgia leaders recently expanded the availability of the COVID-19 vaccine, which was originally only available to front line health care workers, to include any Georgian who is over the age of 65. That expansion this past week has quickly led to a demand that health officials are not able to keep up with because of supply issues.

And, that has meant appointments are not easy to get.

“We are certainly seeing an increase in demand, especially since Phase 1A has been expanded and that makes it a little more challenging because, of course, vaccine availability, meaning the supply of vaccine, is one of the driving factors that we have to really tightly manage,” Gwinnett, Newton and Rockdale Health Departments spokesman Chad Wasdin said.

“So, that’s why we are on an appointment-based system, so in order to get a vaccine from the health department, we do require that you have an appointment, and those have been going incredibly fast. I mean every time we release them, they fill up in a short amount of time.”

State and local officials are grappling with a limited supply of vaccine doses and a high demand, particularly in the metro Atlanta area. Gov. Brian Kemp and Georgia Department of Public Health Commissioner Dr. Kathleen Toomey met with reporters Tuesday afternoon to discuss the distribution of the vaccine across the state.

Kemp — who at one point conceded “there are simply vastly more Georgians that want the vaccine than can get it today” — stressed that while the group of people who can get the vaccine was expanded in Phase 1A to include the elderly, it has always been contingent on availability of the vaccine.

“We certainly have a long way to go,” Kemp said. “Many local health departments are being inundated with calls and web site forms from Georgians hoping to schedule their vaccines.”

The governor warned that phone lines will likely be busy and websites designed to schedule appointments will likely crash due to the demand.

Bill Becket said his family did not run into any issues getting his father’s appointment scheduled, however.

“It was pretty easy,” he said. “We did it online. I think we got lucky.”

Kemp said there are 1.3 million seniors and 536,000 health care workers in Georgia. There is also a limited supply of vaccines being sent out for distribution to the public each week.

The state gets 120,000 vaccines per week, with 40,000 of them designated to go to CVS and Walgreens to vaccinate nursing home employees and residents under the federal Operation Warp Speed program. That means Georgia currently gets about 80,000 vaccines per week to distribute to health care workers and people over 65.

The governor said that works out to be about 11,500 doses a day, and the Georgia Department of Public Health has seen that many vaccine doses, or sometimes more, distributed each day in the last week.

“In the first month of vaccine distribution, we were always going to have far more demand, even after we strictly limited eligibility, than we had supply,” Kemp said. “That is what both Dr. Toomey and I have said consistently since we began this lengthy process.

“Let me remind you, the state is not producing the vaccine or deciding how many vaccines are out there. The number of vaccines administered is, first and foremost, dependent on the number of vaccines made available to us through the federal government and Operation Warp Speed.”

While Georgia saw high demand for health services related to COVID-19 before — namely the high demand and long waits to get a COVID-19 test last summer — that pales in comparison to what the state has seen in terms of demand for the vaccine, Kemp said.

It’s led to frustration among many older Georgians who now qualify for the vaccine but can’t make an appointment to get it because appointment slots are filling up quickly.

Loganville resident Ernest Wade called it “sheer stupidity” on Kemp’s part to open vaccine elligilbility to anyone over 65 in Phase 1A.

“As a result of this gross miscalculation, the website for the Gwinnett-Newton-Rockdale Health System among others has effectively been paralyzed with tens of thousands of senior Georgians becoming quite angry at not only being unable to receive the vaccine but the abysmal lack of information given to them,” Wade said in a letter to the Daily Post.

“A saner approach would have been to first prioritize the more endangered over-80 seniors. What we have here is an unforgivable communications gap at the state and local levels.”

In Gwinnett, there are two vaccination sites being operated by local health officials. One is at the health department’s Lawrenceville health center and the other is at its Norcross health center. Those facilities will offer extended hours on Wednesday and Saturday to distribute more vaccines.

The Gwinnett, Newton and Rockdale health district also has a vaccination site in Newton County.

On the week of Jan. 4, the health district’s three sites collectively averaged more than 700 vaccinations a day. They did more than 900 vaccinations during a weekend distribution event on Jan. 9.

“Now that (event on Saturday) made it a little bit easier on Saturday because, of course, we weren’t providing other health department services, like WIC, that are services that we can’t stop offering to the public,” Wasdin said. “We have to continue offering some services and that’s one of those other challenges as well.”

The health department’s spokesman said another factor that is causing the vaccine distribution to go slowly is that officials still have to follow COVID-19 guidelines, which means limiting the number of people on site at any given time to allow for social distancing.

Toomey said, statewide, 227,199 doses of the vaccine had been reported in a state data system as having been distributed as of noon Tuesday.

Wasdin deferred questions about the total number of vaccine doses distributed in Gwinnett to officials at the Georgia Department of Public Health, who have a database that tracks those numbers.

He acknowledged the health department is facing a daunting task of distributing the vaccine, particularly given the high demand and limited supply.

“This is certainly unprecedented,” Wasdin said. “This is a challenging response and we are doing our best to meet the demand that there is in the community.

“However, it’s also important to recognize that ultimately, we won’t be the only providers of vaccines in the community. Other private providers are working on signing up as vaccine providers. They’re working on getting their own stock of vaccines and then they’re looking on their own logistics on how they can start vaccinating, whether it be their own clients or whether they open it up to the larger Phase 1A group.”

“It just happened like one thing after another, after another,” Jones’ daughter, Nyenneh Jones, told Daily Post news partner FOX 5 Atlanta. “It was like a ball rolling downhill.”

Gwinnett County Public Schools officials said they could not confirm the cause of Jones’ death due to health privacy laws. A letter that Rock Springs Elementary School Principal Allan Gee sent to parents on Jan. 5 to inform them of Jones’ death did not mention COVID-19.

The letter noted that Jones had been at Rock Springs Elementary School since 2018 and that she officially entered retirement in December. Jones worked with students in a self-contained special education class at the school “in a caring and respectful manner,” the principal told the school’s parents.

“Although Ms. Jones would not have been returning to our school this semester as she had retired in December, I knew our Rock Springs family would want to know of our loss,” Gee said in the letter. “Losing a teacher, co-worker, and member of our school family is hard.”

In addition to being a teacher, Jones was also the primary caretaker for her son, who is disabled.

Jones’ family told FOX 5 that they believe she contracted the disease after someone at the school was diagnosed with it, although her daughter said the paraprofessional had taken great lengths to protect herself from getting the disease.

Maude Jones had already planned to retire at the end of the fall semester before she got COVID. The plan was for her last day at school before her retirement began to be Dec. 18, but she was hospitalized two days before that with complications from COVID-19.

“We beat ourselves up every day,” Nyenneh Jones said. “We should have encouraged her more to just not go back after the Thanksgiving break.”

To date, Rock Springs Elementary School has reported eight confirmed cases of COVID-19, as well as two suspected cases and 13 close contacts with someone who has the disease.

Those numbers include one new confirmed case, one new suspected case and six close contacts that were reported by the school on Monday.

The school system has reported a total of 568 confirmed cases, 330 suspected cases and 2,703 close contacts so far during the current school year.

Three school board members — Everton Blair, Karen Watkins and Tarece Johnson — pushed for starting the spring semester in an all digital format and delaying a return to in-person instruction until Jan. 19 because of a sharp new spike of COVID-19 cases in Gwinnett County that began over the holidays. Superintendent J. Alvin Wilbanks, who had the final say on how students began the semester, disagreed with them during a called meeting on Jan. 4, however, and expressed opposition to making a change to the start of the semester.

Now, the restaurant is taking in somewhere between about $14,000 and $18,000 per month as COVID-19-related restrictions mean less people are can eat there, and the pandemic has scared off some customers.

“It’s been devastating because if you mark off every other booth and take out half of your tables, even if people were coming in and filling them up — we’ve had two or three times where people had to wait — but all that were about 48 people,” Duluth Rexall Grill owner Lynda Alley said.

“Normally, we’d have 130 to 140 people that we seat, so we’re doing probably a third, at maximum half the volume with the drive thru.”

Alley, who has already put all of the money she had into keeping the restaurant open as long as it has during the pandemic, had planned on closing the restaurant’s doors permanently at the beginning of the month. Supporters of the longtime Duluth mainstay have stepped in and begun rallying to try and prevent that from happening, however.

CRS Properties launched a “Save The Grill” campaign on social media to raise awareness of the challenges the Duluth Rexall Grill is facing. As Alley said, the popular eatery — like all restaurants — faced restrictions on crowd sizes and other operations in addition to some people feeling uneasy about eating out during a pandemic.

“The iconic Duluth Rexall Grill established in 1969 is facing permanent closure due to the adverse impacts of the COVID economy,” CRS officials said in a Facebook post on Tuesday. “Lockdown, fewer customers visiting, and the restraints of the 39 COVID regulations now in place have devastated this small, locally-owned, hometown eatery.”

A GoFundMe account has been set up, with a goal of raising $100,000 to help the restaurant, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2019. So far, the “Save The Grill” effort has raised just $3,950 through that fundraising effort. Another fundraiser on Facebook has been raising additional funds.

The GoFundMe campaign can be found at bit.ly/35EBe12.

“If you know anything about Duluth you know we support our local community,” fundraising campaign organizer Laurie Brosius said on the GoFundMe page. “With that being said I have created this GoFundMe in hope to raise this dearly loved Family Restaurant. Please donate and share to keep this Downtown Duluth favorite alive.”

Another fundraising effort organized by Laura Seagraves can be found at bit.ly/3irrFYE.

Alley said the fundraising efforts have been helpful to the restaurant.

“(It’s) funded the payroll for the last couple of weeks, but I still haven’t made enough to do my rent or my utilities for this month,” Alley said. “I keep thinking we’ll get another (Paycheck Protection Program), which will help for about eight weeks and then hopefully we’ll get enough donations to make it until people get vaccinated.

“You know, if people get vaccinated and we get some herd immunity, maybe we can open back up to normal and people can start going out again.”

In the meantime, Alley is also trying to raise awareness about the restaurant’s drive-thru option, which she said is not a widely known feature. On Tuesdays through Fridays, the drive-thru is open from 6:30 a.m. until 7 p.m. and on the weekends, the drive-thru hours are 7:30 a.m. until 2 p.m.

“If people aren’t comfortable (coming in to the restaurant), then maybe they can go through the drive-thru,” Alley said.

“As students returned to in-person and digital instruction this semester, we acknowledged the need to monitor the impact the rising COVID numbers within our community might have on our schools,” Superintendent J. Alvin Wilbanks said in a statement. “The reality is that our school system — like our community and the state — is feeling the results of the holidays and winter break.

“We are experiencing higher numbers of cases, suspected cases, and close contacts among our in-person students and staff. The move to 100% digital learning for the coming week will allow us to effectively serve students while also doing what is best for our students and staff given the current situation.”

A major concern for district officials is its ability to effectively provide instruction amid a post-winter break spike in cases. The district reported 125 new COVID-19 cases among employees on Jan. 12. As a result, there are now 785 GCPS employees, including 460 teachers, who are not able to come to work because of exposure to COVID-19.

District officials said GCPS will offer curbside meal pick-up services at the schools and meals will also be delivered along school bus routes during the digital-only learning period. Meal deliveries are expected to run from 10:45 a.m. until noon.

Plans call for a 13,600-square-foot addition with a library and museum in the building.

City and county officials are saying the facility, once the plans are built out, will mark for a first for libraries in the southeastern U.S.

“The new Lawrenceville branch of the Gwinnett Public Library will be the first themed library in the Southeast,” Gwinnett County Commissioner Marlene Fosque said in a statement. “As a themed library, it will incorporate cultural and historic objects and artifacts with the library’s resources and information to benefit the patrons it serves.

“The new library will encourage people of today to learn about the history of segregation and desegregation in Gwinnett County through the stories, accomplishments and personal items from people who attended the Hooper Renwick School in years past. I am truly excited about the creative and educational opportunities this presents and am grateful for the collaboration between the County, the city, and residents to make this happen.”

Under the agreement, the city will transfer ownership of the building to the county, who will manage and operate the facility. The closing on that transfer is expected to happen around the beginning of April.

In addition to the 13,600-square-foot addition, the facility will include the 11,400-square-foot existing building. Beyond having a library and a museum, plans for the facility call for restoring 20 windows on the building’s front facade to their original appearance; a new second-floor entrance from Neal Boulevard; 1,500-square feet of community space with a sink, counter space and room to accommodate up to 100 people; and the incorporating of architectural elements of the old school into the design of the library.

The city will donate artifacts from the Hooper Renwick School, including wood from its gymnasium floor, a scoreboard and a cafeteria window to be used at the facility. It will also work with the Hooper Renwick Legacy Preservation Committee to collect additional artifacts related to the school.

The county will get input from the city before deciding on a final name for the facility, Lawrenceville officials said.

“While there was give and take in reaching the Agreement between the city and county, the Hooper Renwick Legacy Preservation Committee is excited that the Hooper Renwick School building will be preserved for future generations and will re-emerge as the Hooper Renwick Library,” Hooper Renwick Legacy Preservation Committee chairwoman Theresa Bailey said.

“This historically significant structure will stand as a tribute to the African American community, past, present and future, and their experience in Gwinnett County.”

The city will pay the county nearly $1.7 million to help cover costs of construction the library addition and renovating the existing space. It is also expected to do streetscape work and install sidewalks, pedestrian lighting, landscaping and on-street parking at the site.

The county is expected to have a liaison act as an “Interpretive Resources Project Coordinator” who will help the committee collect artifacts; come up with educational messages, interactive displays to showcase the artifacts; designing programming; and create and carry out strategic initiatives.

“We are very pleased that the creation of the Hooper Renwick Library has passed one of its last major hurdles with the signing of this agreement,” Hooper Renwick Legacy Preservation Committee Vice Chairwoman Joyce Moore said. “Our committee is delighted and poised to continue the essential work of designing education programs and acquiring artifacts to make the vision we’ve nurtured for the last four years a reality.”

The fact that a decision has been made on how the Hooper Renwick library will look, and what it will contain, is a major step for the community. The city had at one time planned to just tear down the old school to make room for the SouthLawn development, possibly with a marker placed to recognize the school’s existence.

The old school’s alumni decried the move, however, and pushed city leaders tom find a way to preserve the building instead. That led to the city reaching an agreement with the county to preserve the original part of the building with community space and a museum to Hooper Renwick’s legacy, and build a new Lawrenceville library as an add-on.

A committee of alumni was formed to guide the process of designing the look of the facility, working for the last couple of years on that, and insisting that people should still be able to see the old school’s front facade from Neal Boulevard.

“The preservation of the Hooper Renwick School is the capstone of the SouthLawn development,” Lawrenceville Mayor David Still said. “We are delighted to see this important piece of our community’s history preserved. This is local government at its very best — a creative partnership between city and county sparked by a dedicated committee of community volunteers.”