Massive Savannah public schools complex unveiled Friday. Here's what all it includes.

"Limitless potential" was a descriptor for the new Savannah educational complex, which had a ribbon cutting ceremony on Friday.

“Let us open up new possibilities, new ventures, new horizons,” said Savannah-Chatham County Public School System (SCCPSS) Superintendent Denise Watts. “Today is not just about celebrating the beginning and the marking of opening a new facility, it is truly about opening up limitless potential,” she said.

SCCPSS board president Roger Moss followed by saying to the students in the crowd in the Davis-Edwards-Harris Educational Complex's plush two-level theater: "I want you to fill this these buildings with determination and with the biggest dreams you can ever imagine, and I don't want you to ever, ever settle."

School board members unanimously approved Wednesday the district’s recently proposed renaming of the 6-12 multisite complex, located at 100 Priscilla Thomas Way in Garden City. As stressed at last month’s meeting by school officials, and again ahead of the approval this month, the three-tiered name applies to the entire complex, not the schools. A single, although bisected, facility will serve as the new locations for Robert W. Groves High School and George A. Mercer Middle School beginning in August.

After performances by the Groves High School choir and Mercer Middle School band and the ribbon cutting, community members, business partners and media were invited to explore the facility.

Davis-Edwards-Harris campus features top-of-the-line

Approaching 400,000 square feet, the three-story structure can serve up to 2,400 students.

According to a press release from SCCPSS, the campus includes "a digital media lab, Career, Technical and Agricultural Education (CTAE) labs for aviation and logistics as well as business and family consumer sciences. An extensive solar array will produce approximately 30% of the school's power needs.”

The complex has two cafeterias (supported by a single kitchen), two media centers and two gymnasiums (one for each school).

Still in development is the athletics complex, which will include a 3,000-seat football stadium with a field house, a track and field area, multipurpose soccer fields, a high school baseball field, a high school softball field and a little league field.

The complex will also eventually house a Board of Education Police Department headquarters.

Another stand out of the multisite complex is a two-story, 750-seat auditorium with a full-scale performance production stage. More than 660 cars will be able to park in one of the site’s three paved parking lots.

The naming of the Davis-Edwards-Harris Educational Complex

As previously reported by the Savannah Morning News, the names of Harris, Edwards and Davis belong to the families who initially owned the lots within the Sweats Subdivision of Springfield Plantation that would be ultimately claimed by the county through eminent domain to build the original Groves High School in 1955.

At Wednesday’s board meeting, District 8 School Board Representative Tonia Howard-Hall shared that archival documents were discovered by the previous superintendent of SCCPSS, who "wanted to make ensure that the Board of Education was not encroaching on private property, so she … requested a copy of the certificate of appraisal and that is when in the story of the Davis, Edwards and the Harris families was revealed.”

Among those in attendance Friday were relatives and descendants of the Harris, Edwards and Davis families. Some, according to Gary Monroe, the Garden City Homestead Committee President and member of the complex’s naming committee, came from Atlanta, New Jersey and Michigan among other parts of the country.

Another member of the naming committee, Groves High student Summer Coleman spoke at Friday’s ribbon cutting. She said, “The rich history of the land of Harris, Edwards Davis families who wants to own it deserve to be paid homage.” She encouraged the local community and her fellow students to “embrace the richness of our past, for it is the foundation upon which we build our dreams and aspirations.”

Joseph Schwartzburt is the education and workforce development reporter for the Savannah Morning News. You can reach him at JSchwartzburt@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Savannah public school system unveils Davis-Edwards-Harris campus