DALTON, Ga. — For a year, Charlotte Poston drove from her home in Whitfield County to Lee University in Cleveland, Tenn., each day taking her son Seth to the Lee University Developmental Inclusion Classroom (LUDIC).

Diagnosed with autism, Seth, who recently turned 11 and was then about 6, had been completely nonverbal since he was 2.

“At LUDIC, we finally began to see some progress,” she said. “Each day, he was able to communicate just a little bit better.”

But she says the 90-minute roundtrip ride began to wear on her.

“I got to where I hated that drive so bad, and that was back when gas was really expensive, so I was probably burning through a hundred dollars a week going up there,” she said.

That’s why she was excited when she heard about Dalton’s Anna Shaw Children’s Institute, which will provide services to children with autism spectrum disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and other developmental disorders. The six-acre site for the facility, immediately to the west of Hamilton Medical Center’s Brown Conference Center, is currently being cleared. The 54,000-square-foot building is scheduled to open on April 1, 2019. The facility is being made possible in part by the Anna Sue and Bob Shaw Foundation.

“This is going to be such an amazing blessing, not just to the people of Dalton and Whitfield County but to all of northwest Georgia,” said Poston. “I was fortunate. We are a two-parent family. It’s tough on any family traveling to Chattanooga or to Cleveland or to Atlanta for services for your child, but if you are a single parent, or if you have other children in the home, it’s even tougher. Having these services so close will take some of that burden off.”

A symbolic groundbreaking ceremony for the institute was held Thursday at the Brown Conference Center.

Terri Woodruff, executive director of the institute, said the facility will bring physical therapy, speech therapy and other services under one roof. And the facility will have a unique design to help make children more comfortable.

“It will be like a tree house,” she said. “The driveway will wind through trees. It’s built on a hill. There’s an entrance on the first floor, and an entrance on the second floor, so the parents won’t have to take an elevator. That’s huge, because children with autism sometimes don’t like elevators.”

Susan Young, daughter of Anna Sue and Bob Shaw and a trustee of the Anna Sue and Bob Shaw Foundation, said the institute will be a place of “happiness, knowledge and hope.”

Anna Adamson, Anna and Bob Shaw’s granddaughter, said the institute is a fitting tribute to her grandmother.

“She was the mother of four children herself. She loved children,” she said. “She moved from Rome to Dalton and immediately Dalton became her home. This institute allows her to give to Dalton’s children the way she gave to her own children, and I think that is really special.”

Dalton pediatrician Dr. Luis Viamonte, citing numbers from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said 15 percent of children have one or more developmental disorders and one in 64 children in Georgia has autism spectrum disorder. He commended the Shaw family and the Anna Sue and Bob Shaw Foundation for its vision in supporting the institute.

Jeff Myers, president and CEO of Hamilton Health Care System, said he believes the institute will become not just a regional center but a national center for the treatment of autism and other developmental disorders.