The Ardmore Welcome Center, a north Limestone County fixture since 1977, will fall under the wrecking ball within two years, according to an Alabama Department of Transportation spokesman.

Both the Ardmore and the Lanett centers are slated for demolition after ALDOT officials found it was cheaper to tear them down and build a new structure than to renovate and repair them.

“We were planning on renovating them, but it would cost a third again as high as replacing them,” said Randy Braden, an assistant maintenance engineer for ALDOT who oversees the physical plant at each of the state’s eight welcome centers.

Braden said it would cost another 25 percent more to leave the centers open during renovation.

Curtis Vinson of the ALDOT North Alabama Regional Office in Guntersville said I would be closer to two years before construction would begin.

“We’re probably looking at the end of 2008—it’s in the budget for then,” said Vinson. “We would have had to rehabilitate the existing structures and update them for the correct number of restrooms. Based on one in another part of the state—I believe it was Calhoun County—we found it would be more economical to replace them.”

Vinson said the estimated cost of a new center would be $1.5 million. “We probably won’t know until we see further designs,” he said. “Right now, we’re doing traffic counts and trying to determine how much use the center gets. One of the things we’re looking at is doing two sets of men’s and women’s restrooms. A lot of the centers have those to allow closing one set for cleaning.”

Jackie Pitts, manager of the Ardmore Welcome Center, said she and her staff of five were glad to hear they were getting a new center.

“The Department of Transportation does a really good job of taking care of this center,” said Pitts. “But we are very limited in display space, and our storage is limited. We work 40-hour weeks and we’re open seven days a week. The major holidays of the winter we are closed—Thanksgiving and Christmas—but we’re open on all the summer holidays.”

Pitts said that ALDOT personnel are always at the center, even though the information room is closed. She said restrooms are always available to travelers.

Also slated for work is the Cleburne Welcome Center, but that one is to be renovated. Six student teams from Auburn University’s College of Architecture, Design and Construction presented scale models of their designs for the Cleburne renovation last week in Montgomery. A Talladega racecar crashing through a brick wall, a plasma TV centered over the fireplace, an electronic brochure finder, and stations of sweet and unsweetened ice tea were among the suggestions of six design teams.

Their professor, Randy Bartlett, said the teams, made up of three students each, designed their creations on computers and then translated them into scale models that they constructed.  The students paid attention to every detail, even constructing tiny brochures for the brochure racks.

Braden said the Auburn student team would not be designing the new Ardmore Welcome Center, but rather a consultant from a professional firm.

“We might use some of the ideas of the Auburn group because some of them are pretty good,” said Braden.