Dallas Mayor Boyd Austin photo credit: https://twitter.com/GeorgiaDDS

Paulding residents can look forward to driving less to visit a Driver Services facility. Paulding’s Department of Driver Services (DDS) facility on the Watson Government Campus in Dallas opens for business this week. Paulding motorists can now obtain or renew their driver’s licenses locally.
According to DDS spokeswoman Susan Sports, new driver’s centers typically use the same design and completion was originally targeted for early 2016.
“We’ve got it pretty much down to a science,” Ms. Sports said. Since 2014 the DDS has had a plan for a 10,000-square- foot driver services “super center” adjacent to Paulding County’s Watson government complex in Dallas.
The center was planned to include 20 service counters, 10 computer stations and waiting areas inside the building and a road test course outside for new drivers. A driver center typically handles about 5,000 transactions per month, Sports said.
Paulding Commissioners approved a Bid Award in March of last year for the DDS facility site work, which began in April and a groundbreaking was held in June.
The two-acre site, which is adjacent to the northwest corner of the complex, includes a parking area for the center and an access road from the site north to West Memorial Drive near the former WellStar Paulding Hospital building.
During the construction phase of the Dallas facility, Paulding Commissioners voted down an agenda item added by Commission Chairman David Austin earlier this year that sought to allow for a commercial testing site to be added to the Watson Government Campus.
Despite interest by the state in locating the testing site in Paulding, as indicated by a $500,000 grant, commissioners apart from Austin, indicated concerns with regard to the proposal and voted against pursuing the state grant citing concerns with the potential for truck traffic on the Watson campus, as well as the additional funding that adding the testing site would require.
The DDS’s facilities planning team “had Paulding on their radar” after seeing it on a list of the state’s 15 fastest-growing counties in Georgia, Sports said, and added that driver’s services officials approached county leaders in 2013 about the project.
The DDS regularly evaluates potential locations for service locations based on such factors as population growth and distance between current locations, Sports said.

(Photo: submitted, DDS)