MARIETTA — On Tuesday morning, county officials broke ground on a new building where they intend to teach people how to use public transportation, and on Tuesday night, county commissioners accepted a federal grant to help restore some paratransit service that was axed in budget cuts last year.

Cobb Community Transit’s new Mobility Center will be built at 463 Commerce Park Drive in Marietta, not far from the Marietta Transfer Station on South Marietta Parkway.

The Federal Transit Administration is paying $8.2 million of the $10 million cost of the building. Cobb County and the state of Georgia are splitting the balance.

When it is finished in February, the 10,560-square-foot, single-story building will serve as headquarters for Cobb’s paratransit and senior transportation services.

The facility will offer training on how to use CCT’s services to seniors and the disabled, as well as serving as a place for them to fill out applications for the services. CCT manager Rebecca Gutowsky said it will also serve as a site for school groups to come in and learn about the benefits of public transportation for congestion relief and improving the environment.

“This facility is going to be a one-stop shop,” Gutowsky said. There will not be any new employees, she said.

The new building will cost $52,000 a year to operate, she said.

Commission Chairman Tim Lee, who said this will be the first facility of its kind in the area, said the county will be able to handle the additional costs.

“We’ll figure out when it gets built how to handle that,” he said. “It’s being built very green, so the costs and efficiencies are not going to be that of a typical building.”

“It will be a benchmark for the region and the state,” he said.

Tom Thomson, the FTA’s deputy regional administrator, said the facility is in line with an executive order signed in 2004 by then-President George W. Bush that aims to make transit more accessible and improve mobility.

Seeing the new construction is a sign that Cobb is pulling out of its recent financial troubles, said northwest Cobb Commissioner Helen Goreham, the Board of Commissioners liaison for Cobb DOT.

“We don’t have too many opportunities for groundbreakings, so it makes each one more and more special,” she said.

CRS Building Corp. of Alpharetta is the general contractor for the Mobility Center. Niles Bolton Associates Inc. of Atlanta, performed architectural design.

On Tuesday night, commissioners unanimously accepted a $527,850 federal grant that they will use to restore paratransit services for 200 people who lost service when the county cut three bus routes last year. Cobb Department of Transportation Director Faye DiMassimo said CCT hopes to add new users as well. The county will provide another $527,850 in matching funds for the three-year program, with most of that coming from already allocated transit funds and $50,535 coming from projected user co-pays.

Last year, commissioners discontinued three CCT routes, in south and east Cobb, to save money, and paratransit service in those same areas was also cut.

On Thursday at 10 a.m., the county will hold another groundbreaking ceremony, this time for the final leg of the Noonday Creek Trail at 2801 George Busbee Parkway near Kennesaw. When complete, the $11.6 million trail will run seven miles through the Town Center Community Improvement District to Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park.