Gilmer Chamber Buys the Watkins House, the Downtown Ellijay Landmark It Has Run Since 2019

The Gilmer Chamber has purchased the historic Watkins House at 10 Broad Street in downtown Ellijay, taking ownership of the building it has operated as the Downtown Ellijay Welcome Center since 2019 and settling a question the county chewed over publicly for nearly a decade. The Chamber announced the deal on Aug. 13 in a statement on its "This is Ellijay" blog under the heading "Honoring the Past, Investing in the Future."

The property came from the Gilmer County Board of Commissioners. The Chamber says its board of directors reviewed the terms and that legal counsel for both sides went over the transaction to make sure local, state and federal requirements were met. The Chamber did not disclose a purchase price, and its statement refers to plans that begin once the purchase is complete.

What happens inside will look familiar to anyone who has stopped in for a trail map or a festival schedule. The house continues as the visitor welcome center for Gilmer County. It will also hold office space for Chamber staff. The Chamber says it plans upgrades to the building while keeping its historic character and architectural detail intact, and describes itself as the property's next steward.

Why this building has been argued over since 2017

The Watkins House carries the name of Dr. Edward Watkins, an early Ellijay physician. The house later passed to T.H. Tabor, the family behind the Gilmer County Historical Society's Tabor House Museum on Spring Street.

Its future became county business in the fall of 2017. At a joint meeting of the Board of Commissioners and the Building Authority, then Commission Chairman Charlie Paris laid out a plan to move part of the Tabor House museum collection into the Watkins House while the Gilmer Chamber used space there as a welcome center. Gilmer Arts had a proposal in to display pieces from its collections too. Chamber President and CEO Paige Green told the two boards that if three separate organizations were going to share one building, somebody needed to define the structure first.

Nothing was settled that night. The Building Authority was sitting on a $4,800 quote for a full historic inspection of the Tabor House, a figure that stopped the room cold after a routine inspection on another county building had run about $600. Post Commissioner Travis Crouch said he was not spending the $4,800 until he had a termite inspection in hand. At the time, the county was still waiting on furniture so it could move Planning and Zoning out of the Watkins House and free the space up.

One owner instead of a committee

The practical change is who decides. For years the building's use depended on the county, the Building Authority and whichever tenants were negotiating for room in it. Now a single organization owns it and has said what it intends to do with the space.

The Chamber frames the purchase as an investment in the county's tourism industry and its local businesses as much as in the structure itself. Seven years of running a visitor desk in a building it did not own gave it a clear enough picture of what needed fixing.

What it means for the fall

The welcome center is the listed venue for the 2026 Apple Arts Festival, scheduled for the second and third weekends of October: Oct. 10 and 11, then Oct. 17 and 18. Saturday hours run 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sundays 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The Merry Mountain Town Festival follows on Friday, Nov. 27, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. The welcome center's number is 706-635-7401.

The Chamber has not released a timeline for renovation work, a closing date, or a list of what gets repaired first. The Tabor House Museum, meanwhile, remains where it has been, behind the courthouse on Spring Street, run by the historical society and free to enter. Whether any of that collection ever moves down to Broad Street is now a conversation between the historical society and a private owner rather than an item on a county agenda.

Follow along at the Ellijay Georgia Community Website, and if you have memories of the Watkins House or thoughts on what belongs inside it, join the conversation in our Community Forum. You can read more community stories and follow local business and development coverage as this one develops.

Header photo: Tamparitus / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)