Georgia licensing office finds new home in Macon

It takes a few twists and turns through the corporate halls of an office building at Arkwright Road to reach the new licensing office for the state of Georgia.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Mayor Lester Miller celebrated the “new digs” for the state’s licensing division at a Nov. 13 press conference. The move reduces the division’s footprint while maintaining the size of its workforce.

The new office comes in at 9,600 square feet while the state’s former east Macon office came in at 80,000 square feet. 

Raffensperger also touted the elimination of paper applications with the launch of the state’s online license application system, aptly named the Georgia Online Application Licensing System.

“We’re actually doing more in much less time and you look at this space we’re standing [in], we’re saving taxpayers $6 million,” the secretary of state said. 

The Georgia Secretary of State’s Licensing Division handles licenses, renewals and complaints for jobs ranging from private investigators to plumbers and librarians. There are more than 40 different licensing boards under the state office.

Raffensperger said the office has been able to reduce processing times on nursing applications by 30 days, as well as times for license renewals, which take “not days, minutes.”

Licensing office employees moved into their new office more than a month ago.

“It’s the same people, we’re just a little bit closer,” said Ursula Clark, an administrative assistant at the licensing division.

The licensing division resided at its east Macon office off Coliseum Drive for more than two decades. The aging office will be demolished to make way for the East Bank project, a planned county development centered around a plot of land off the former site of the Bibb Mill.

Miller said the county will begin vetting developers sometime next year. Although a gateway to the new national park is planned as part of the project, the development is in no way contingent on approval of the park by the U.S. congress, he said.

“The type of things that may go in there, it might be one thing if it’s a national park you might see hotels there … if you don’t have a national park you might see more residential and retail,” he said.

Miller added the development will coincide with the new convention center for downtown Macon.