City, county officials discuss building projects

A year of navigating a pandemic hasn’t halted a pair of major building projects for Calhoun and Gordon County governments.

For the city, the most major construction project has been the new Calhoun Police Department headquarters and recreation maintenance facility on McDaniel Station Road.

After waiting on environmental soil and erosion clearances from the state due to the site’s proximity to Oothcalooga Creek, grading finally began the police facility the second week of February.

“The contractor who won the bid, their period was eleven months once they commence, so we’ve started the clock,” said Calhoun City Administrator Paul Worley. “I would say a year is what we’re looking at for the project. We would have already liked to have moved a lot of dirt, but we’ve been having so much rain. Hopefully, weather permitting, they can make up some of that time.”

According to the city, the new police department plan is for a 13,754 square foot building with a 5,000 square foot vehicle service building, along with an indoor/outdoor K-9 kennel.

Adjacent to the Recreation Department’s football field and dog park, the site will also be home to a 4,000-square-foot recreation maintenance facility. Future plans are to eventually remove the old maintenance building to make way for a new athletics structure.

“We should see a lot of results once we get into spring and summer,” said Worley. “Once we get that complete, we’d be looking to demolish the old maintenance building and that area would be a new basketball gym.”

Though the new police facility might seem like its outside of the traditional downtown Calhoun footprint, Chief Tony Pyle likes the accessibility McDaniel Station road will give his officers.

“The good thing about it is access,” Pyle said. “You can pull out and go right and you’re on 53 Spur, or you can go left and you’re near Walmart.”

Aside from access, space and officer safety have always been the main focuses of a new department, according to Pyle.

“Space is the biggest thing. This building we’re in now was built in the 20s or 30s and has asbestos pipes and tile,” Pyle said. “The basement floods, so we deal with black mold. We just use 60% of the building because the basement is uninhabitable. It’s not really something we can work out of.”

Pyle said he looks forward to not only a safer work environment, but also getting most of the department back under one roof. Currently the department’s Criminal Investigations Division works out of a facility at the airport.

“We’ll have everyone under the same roof except the Special Operations Unit,” said Pyle, who said being split up can lead to communications issues. “Some things can fall through the cracks if you’re not careful. It’ll be a big plus for us, and by ‘us’ I mean the community.”

The new police facility will also have more room outside, according to Pyle, and will be much safer for the department’s K-9 officers, a benefit that can literally save a dog’s life.

“Currently, we have nowhere to put the dogs when an officer is inside, but soon we’ll be able to take the dog out into a detached area, not just sitting in the car,” Pyle said, noting that it would be devastating both financially and emotionally for the department to lose a dog due to a vehicle malfunction.

With an old building also comes infrastructure limitations in the area of technical capabilities.

“A lot of the things we have issues with here we won’t necessarily have there, like limitations on wiring up equipment,” Pyle said.

As far as any future use of the current downtown facility, that hasn’t been decided yet, according to Pyle.

“That’s up for debate,” he said. “It’s a historical building so it’s not going away, but we’re not sure about a police presence at that building. It’s an ongoing discussion.”

For the county, the biggest ongoing project this year continues to be the renovation and expansion of the Courthouse Annex on South Piedmont Street.

“The County Annex project is going very well,” County Administrator Jim Ledbetter said. “We are pleased that we have a local general contractor, Momon Construction, in charge of the project.”

Ledbetter said the terms of the bid have helped protect the taxpayer from recent fluctuations in building costs.

“This project was publicly bid and then contracted as ‘Construction Manager at Risk,’” he said. “This means the general contractor has committed to deliver the project within a guaranteed maximum price. Proceeding as CM at Risk protects county revenue from the rapidly rising costs of construction that is occurring now.”

The project is scheduled to be finished in a little less than a year from now, but Ledbetter said that could be sooner.

“Officially, the completion date is February 2022,” he said. “Unofficially, it looks like we are ahead of schedule and may be finished ahead of time. Upon completion of the annex, the Superior Courts, Clerk of Superior Court, District Attorney’s Office and Victim’s Assistance will move into the new facility.

Following the annex completion, the same company will get to work on the courthouse on South Wall Street.

“Very soon thereafter, Momon Construction will begin renovations to the Main Courthouse which also has a locked in guaranteed maximum price,” Ledbetter said. “These projects are both funded with SPLOST revenue.”

Another ongoing project for the city has been the infrastructure work on Peters Street.

“Public works has made a lot of progress with the storm drainage work,” Worley said. “That was one of the biggest motivators … pedestrian safety. Before, we basically had an open road with open ditches on both sides, and families walking, some with baby strollers, so being able to get those ditches covered up, widening the road and adding a sidewalk is something we’re really excited about.”

Worley said some of the most time intensive work is already behind crews on the project as it begins to wind down.

“They’ve got a nice retaining wall and have been pouring curb,” he said. “Once we get all the curb in it will really start taking shape.”

According to Ledbetter, a whole host of planned projects are in the works for the coming years for the county government, including work at Brookshire Park, Senior Center renovations, a new evidence building and morgue, renovations to the county administration buildings, repairs to Mt. Olive Church road, planning for a multi-use facility, renovations to the bathrooms at Salacoa Park and walking trails/river access.

“These are all SPLOST funded projects,” Ledbetter said. “Sometimes it seems like we have been talking about these projects for a long time, but the county collects the money first and the moves forward with the project to avoid borrowing the money and incurring interest charges and loan fees. In fact, the county is able to invest the collected money in Georgia Fund 1 and earns interest while the projects are being planned.”

In the area of trails, the city recently began work on a new section of the Rivers to Ridge system.

“It’s about a three quarter mile connection that we’re in the beginning section that runs from the Rec. department, along the creek north from the Dixie Group,” Worley said. “We were able to acquire boundary property from Dixie Group to a sidewalk on Pine Street next to the CHS baseball field, giving us a nice connectivity to the housing authority, high school and the downtown area.”

This article originally ran on northwestgeorgianews.com.