Baldwin elected officials, staff, and engineers attended a groundbreaking ceremony Wednesday morning for the new Public Works facility on Industrial Park Road. Mayor Stephanie Almagno thanked everyone for attending the ceremony and thanked past elected officials and current staff for making the dream become a reality.
She stated that the facility was sorely needed to improve working conditions for employees and give them space for their equipment. She added that the city had grown over the years and the need for services had grown as well.
The current Public Works facility, on Willingham Avenue, sits on 1.26 acres and has a 3,200-square-foot building with various outbuildings to keep equipment out of the weather and for storage. The building was built in the early 1980s.
The new facility will dwell on approximately 9 acres and will have a 7,000-square-foot building. Storage buildings will also be built to store equipment and water/sewer system parts.
Public Works Director Scott Barnhart has been working on this project for several years. He explains that he was brought in almost 10 years ago to improve the services that the Public Works department provides to the citizens of Baldwin. During his time as the Public Works Director, he realized the advantage of a new facility. “One of the things we found was a need for a new Public Works building.”
“We started looking for the land to buy to build one and to design one to be able to serve the citizens of Baldwin for the next 50 years,” he tells Now Habersham.
Barnhart talked about the new facility and the employees, “It will be somewhere, where the employees can work out of and have the tools they need to perform for the citizens as they need to perform.”
After the ceremony, Almagno stated, “This is so exciting. It is incumbent on us to protect our staff so they can do good work for the citizens of Baldwin.” After so many years of planning and developing this project she added, ”It’s reality.”
Junior Robinson, who has been with the Public Works department for 38 years, stated that the city has really grown over the past several years and the city now has great equipment, great employees, great supervisors, and now a new building. “We have gone a long way, a long way,” he tells Now Habersham.
The building isn’t scheduled to be completed until at least August 2024. Dillon Lee from Precision Metal out of Cleveland stated that one of the reasons for the delay is the lead times in getting the materials. It is taking as long as 20 weeks to receive everything to get started. He tells Now Habersham that the building has already been ordered and once the plans are received from the manufacturer, they can get their concrete crews in place to begin pouring the foundation and slab. He estimates that it should be in about two weeks.
