JONESBORO — In its regular meeting on Monday, June 5, the Clayton County Board of Education approved a bid from Meja Construction for the new Convocation Center and College and Career Academy.
The base bid is $117 million but there’s an additional $13 million expected to be spent on architectural fees, furniture, equipment and contingencies to bring the total to nearly $131 million.
The project will be paid for out of Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) money.
All school board members voted to accept the bid, except for Mark Christmas, who abstained.
“Meja has done a whole lot of work for us and we have this wide punchlist that our maintenance people have to deal with constantly, and until we see some improvement with this, I will not vote on Meja,” Christmas said.
The school board received two bids for the project — one from Meja and one from Carroll Daniel Construction Company for $123.5 million.
The facility will be at the former Sears store at Southlake Mall in Morrow.
The facility will feature an arena with a capacity of about 8,000 seats and a 15,000-square-foot college and career academy.
The school system bought the Southlake Sears building for $4.4 million in the fall of 2021. The purchase included about 15 acres at the mall.
The school system has a video on its website that features renderings of the new facility. The video is at
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