Work has begun on City of Henderson Municipal Services Center

NEWS RELEASE FROM CITY OF HENDERSON PIO DONNA STINNETT

HENDERSON, KY, April 6, 2016  — After a 10-year journey of formulating a plan for a City of Henderson Municipal Services Center, work has finally begun on transforming the former Hugh Edward Sandefur Training Center building to fulfill that goal.

The building, which is located in Henderson Corporate Park, will house multiple divisions of the Public Works and Gas departments, Engineering services, a central garage and space for a backup emergency dispatch center.

A storage yard with a series of buildings that will house vehicles of assorted sizes, as well as a wash pad and a fuel island, will be built on adjacent property. The central garage will be isolated and include three bays to work on vehicles.

The Board of Commissioners awarded a contract for building renovation, new structures construction and site improvement to low bidder Danco Construction Inc. of Evansville, Indiana, on March 22. The total amount of the project is $6.3 million.

Late last week, a Danco work crew began preliminary work at the site. The Municipal Services Center will likely be ready for its new use in January 2017.

“For more than 10 years, the City has been in the process of land acquisition and design,” said Assistant City Manager William “Buzzy” Newman.

Originally, the City had pursued a plan to build a new Municipal Services Center from the ground up on a tract of land it purchased on Zion Road. But cost estimates based on design, which also included the Henderson Water Utility, were more than $25 million and prohibitive. That tract has since been sold.

Since 2010, Newman said, the City had continued to look for a property within the city limits that might be functional as a Municipal Services Center.

Then, in late 2014, the City was approached about the possibility of acquiring the Sandefur property. That organization was looking for a smaller and more manageable building.

Once that acquisition was made, the City began looking at the best modifications and uses for the site. Newman said the design work that was started last summer was finalized this past January.

He said the project was needed because the Public Works office on Outer Fifth Street, constructed in the 1960s, is outdated and had been through “so many floods” before improvements were made to the Canoe Creek drainage system.

Almost every service now conducted at the Fifth Street building will move to the Municipal Services Center, though sand and salt storage and snow plowing equipment will remain.

Tom Weisling

Caption info: Tom Weisling, Danco Construction Inc. project superintendent, reviews plans for the Henderson Municipal Services Center earlier this week. The building renovation, structures construction and site improvement project has just begun at the former Hugh Edward Sandefur Training Center building in Henderson Corporate Park. Photo by Donna B. Stinnett.

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