North Metro Technical College was established in 1989 as one of the first institutions created under the direction of the new Department of Technical and Adult Education. Originally named North Metro Technical Institute, the college was located in Acworth, GA, and officially served Bartow and north Cobb counties, but was also positioned to serve the populations in Cherokee and Paulding counties. The campus was named the North Metro Campus following the 2009 merger. The original and main campus, known as the Marietta Campus, is located immediately adjacent to Marietta, between South Cobb Drive and Sandtown Road. During the early 2000s, three buildings were added on the other side of Sandtown Road, within the Marietta city limits. Its three original campuses are the Mountain View Campus,, South Cobb Campus,, and Paulding Campus,. The Paulding Campus was dedicated in November 1996. A second building was constructed in 2009, and dedicated on October 13, with keynote speaker Glenn Richardson. The Paulding Campus is home to the college's nursing program. The Mountain View Campus was donated to Cobb County by the family of the late Frank Gordy, proprietor of the famous restaurant The Varsity in Atlanta. Specified for educational use, the county supplied the land and most of the construction money for the building, which was dedicated to the county commission in 2000 and opened for class that October, and was transferred to the state in 2009 after having been leased for a dollar a year. It shares a parking lot with the adjacent Mountain View Aquatics Center, an indoor public swimming pool run by the county. The school's address is on Frank Gordy Parkway, a loop which allows access to these developments, but whose street name signs all indicate only Gordy Parkway. The Mountain View Campus is home to the college's Culinary Arts program, Design and Media Production Technology program, and the Television Production Technology program. The South Cobb Campus was renamed the Austell Campus in spring 2010. It consists of two one-story buildings on Tech Center Drive, and its address is on Veterans Memorial Drive, which was originally the historic Bankhead Highway. The Woodstock Campus is located in the former Woodstock Elementary School, and was the second campus of Appalachian Tech. Canton Campus opened at Bluffs Technology Park for winter quarter 2011. Gilmer is the only county within the school's official service area that does not have a campus of its own, but is served by the Appalachian Campus located in Jasper, Pickens County. Through June 2009, graduation ceremonies were held only in June and September, and were at the Mable House amphitheatre in Mableton. Due to the growth of the graduating class, the December 2009 graduation ceremony was held at the Cobb Galleria Centre; in June 2010 it was held nearby at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre where it has remained until 2016, during which the ceremony was held at the Clarence Brown Conference Center in Cartersville.
