By Janet Pelletier / Staff

Roswell's got a lot going for it:  parks, charming downtown, AAA bond rating, and highly-rated schools. 
But Mayor Jere Wood sees something that's sorely lacking: a college.

"If you look at Roswell, with about 100,000 people, we have just about everything but a college," Wood said. "We've got a hospital, we've got churches, we've got schools, we've got great institutions, but the one thing we're missing is a college. We've got a large demand here for that."

The argument for bringing higher education to town isn't exactly new; it's just being resurrected as of late. During Wood's first mayoral campaign in 1997, he made an eleventh-hour appeal to bring Georgia State University to Roswell in an effort to convince the school to change its mind about locating in Alpharetta. It was too little, too late.

But the idea is again gaining steam, and it's an issue Wood took up in his most recent re-election bid.

"It's just in the organizing phase," he said. "I don't have a committee or a plan, but I'm developing a plan. I know the chamber's talking about bringing a technical school to Roswell and I'm working with them. I'm also talking to our state legislators, council members, local people, but I'm really just on the front end of this thing. It's pretty early in the game."

One existing college that had been courted was Georgia Perimeter, but Wood said the Board of Regents shot down the idea, saying students from Roswell were commuting to class and that didn't seem to be a problem.

"I thought that was not a particularly rational logic," Wood said. "We've got more folks from Roswell that go to college than from anywhere else. If you're in business, you try to cater to your customers. I think the Board of Regents needs to change its position and look at what their customers want versus what the Board of Regents wants."

North Fulton Chamber of Commerce CEO Brandon Beech has been leading his own effort to bring a technical school to Roswell, which Wood said he supports.

As to possible locations, Wood said the city is looking to redevelop aging shopping centers.

"Long-term, it depends on what the school's plans are, but short-term, you could take some of these empty strip centers and turn them into something," he said. "We've turned some of these strip centers into high schools, middle schools, so I don't see a reason why we can't take some of these vacant commercial properties and turn them into a college or a technical school."