Fentress County’s new TCAT/Roane State Facility will be named after Tennessee Senator Ken Yager and Fentress County Executive Jimmy Johnson.
The Tennessee Board of Regents approved the building name during a quarterly meeting on Friday. The Ken Yager & Jimmy Johnson Building currently under construction. Johnson said he feels honored.
“You get a name on a building like that, it’s forever, but it also represents a lot of the people that you work for and a lot of people that you had help to get something there,” Johnson said. “And I’ll speak highly of each and every one that has, because it definitely takes, I’ve said several times, I can go from here to California, but somebody’s gotta have some gas out there some place to help me get on and that’s the way it is.”
Johnson said having a full-time campus in Fentress County was something that had been needed for a very long time. Johnson said both he and Yager advocated for a permanent campus so Fentress County residents could have access to higher education.
“We have had some temporary places here in the county for Roane State, but this putting everything together at one central location in the county will be a draw where a lot of your graduates and adults won’t have to leave the county to go out of town to get an education now or a good vocational diploma,” Johnson said.
Johnson said the campus almost never happened as the county purchased the land for a different reason before the county commission decided to repurpose the land for the school. Johnson said Roane State’s campus in Fentress County will have a major impact on the county.
“It will have an impact on your local businesses and such when you put a college and a TCAT right in the almost center of the county,” Johnson said. “It will have an impact on just a lot of things, you know, as far as the city of Jamestown, they have an impact on that.”
