During last Monday night’s regular monthly meeting, Ron Duggin, Superintendent of Boyce Ballard Construction, LLC updated the mayor and aldermen on the project.
“We hope to have it all under roof within four to five weeks. My goal is to be done by July,” he said.
Groundbreaking was held in early September but construction was held up for a few weeks after the contractor encountered “unsuitable” or soft soils on the site.
The city and Boyce Ballard agreed to split the costs in fixing the problem and construction resumed in November.
Duggin said all the unsuitable soils have been removed and the site is more stable now.
“We had a tough time getting passed our unsuitable soils but all of that is behind us now. We pulled about two feet of unsuitable soils out of the whole site. It was really soft. It had to be removed and we replaced it with shot rock. We have a good solid base under all the parking lots and all over the whole pad. Anything that requires any kind of direct heavy loads we have it well supported,” said Duggin.
While digging the contractor came across an old fuel tank on the site that had been there for decades. They had not anticipated that discovery but the tank was dug up and hauled away along with the contaminated soils around it.
“We found about a 200 gallon fuel tank in the front out here. That was a surprise. It had been there for no telling how long. It had rusted through. We got that taken care of. With the help of the state and a testing firm we got all the soils tested and removed and the tank has been disposed of through recycling,” said Duggin.
Utilities are now in place as well as the asphalt and concrete slab and curbing is in progress.
“I have all my site utilities underground and it could not have been done without the help of all the city and utility people. Everyone has been real helpful. The power and data poles got set within a week and it allowed me to tie all the utilities into those poles. We have storm, water, power, data, sanitary sewer and natural gas and it all has been stubbed into the building,” said Duggin.
“We moved on to the curbing. It is in progress and about 50% complete. It should be done by the end of this week”.
“The binder has been put in. Asphalt binder is the first two inch layer that goes in before you put the top layer in. It was my ambition to get in not only the slab but the asphalt binder before the end of the year and it worked out. We got the asphalt and concrete slab in within a day of each other. We poured the slab one day and put the asphalt down the second day,” Duggin continued.
“The concrete drive that goes across the whole rear of the site will be the beginning of the site concrete. We plan to pour the section underneath the canopy Friday”.
“Masonry is moving along well. We needed to get our masonry up in order to be able to tie our walls in. We are almost complete with the evidence vault and we will be working on the holding cells hopefully by the end of the week. The tower is already up. You must have the tower there because the steel bears on it and the trusses bear on it. We will have to brick it in order to set our trusses. Next week we will be bricking that tower,” said Duggin.
“The steel structure is complete. The steel that holds up the canopy is in place. We will start standing walls up Wednesday,” he added.
The new police department building will be located on Don Cantrell Street across from city hall. The actual bid from Boyce Ballard Construction of Murfreesboro to build it was $2,395,000 but the city issued up to $2.5 million in bonds for the project.
The new police department will have a total roofed area of 12,800 square feet which includes a 1,400 square foot sally port. It is to encompass a front lobby, records clerk office, hallways, three holding cells, armory, conference and training rooms, offices for the chief, captain, detectives, and other officers, rooms for records, evidence, investigations, filing reports, locker room, electrical room, closets, restrooms, and break room. Construction is projected to be completed by July 2021.
