By: Summer Kelley, Staff Reporter

Approval of construction amounts for the Trenton Community Center project has left some citizens with questions.

The community/civic center was first proposed at a Trenton City Commission meeting in August of last year.

According to Parks and Recreation Commissioner Chuck Cannon, the commissioner in charge of the project, the idea of a community center for Trenton had been under discussion for a while and originally was going to include a gymnasium.

The amount of money available for a community center was not enough to support the construction of a gym, but plans were made to construct a community center which would include a gallery area, indoor meeting space, outdoor meeting space, kitchen and pet adoption center. 

The architecture firm of River Street Architecture in Chattanooga won the design bid and was asked to include budget friendly materials that could withstand extreme temperatures with minimal heating and cooling costs and would allow the city to turn off the heat and air conditioning completely when the building was not in use. Construction of the center was expected to begin around the middle of September of 2009.

The city hit an unexpected roadblock when construction of the civic center went out for bid. With an original budget of around $475,000, the bids ranging from just over $603,000 to $800,000 were well outside the city’s budget limits. McBryar and Sons Construction submitted the lowest bid. Cannon attributed to the high bids in part to the high costs of some of the building materials chosen by the architect and a series of meetings between the architectural firm and the city began in order to determine what changes could be made to help reduce construction costs.

Progress on the community center project has apparently been made as Cannon asked his fellow commissioners for their approval to spend $362,822 from the new park SPLOST; $95,000 from the administrative SPLOST; and $57,650 from the old park SPLOST to pay for the community center’s construction costs. The new total cost of the center has been set at $515,052, slightly higher than the original budget, but a more workable amount than those previously bid. 

Construction of the new civic center has been awarded to Construction Consultants, the same company currently building the new county courthouse. After the commission meeting was reported in local newspapers, several citizens have questioned how and if the revised plans were re-bid for construction. 

Trenton Mayor Barton Harris said that the city has two or three options available to them after the first set of bids all came in too high.

According to Commissioner Cannon, the option chosen by the city was through the use of proposals.  The city put the Community Center out for re-bid with the option for the contractor to make changes to the design or to materials in order to save money. 

“And after we reviewed all the proposals we went with the contractor that was able to keep the design as close to the original as possible and do so at the lowest possible cost to the tax payers,” Cannon said. “This was an option that the city attorney recommended and after a discussion with the architect it was agreed upon that this was the best option.”

Construction of the new community center, which will be located next to Trenton City Pool and across the road from Jenkins Park, will begin as soon as the ground is ready for digging.