ROBERTSDALE — A new construction project approved recently will put Robertsdale on the path to completing the expansion of public works facilities that began in 2020, Mayor Charles Murphy said Thursday, June 23.

The Robertsdale City Council approved a bid by Sycamore Construction to construct four new buildings for the Public Works Department at a total cost of about $1.1 million. Murphy said the original plan in 2020 called for seven buildings.

"What we're doing right now is out of those seven structures, what they approved the other day was to go and to approve the bid to put up four of those, which is going to be a metal building cover for the fueling station for the vehicles, the mechanical shop, an 8,000-square-foot warehouse and a steel pole barn for part of our equipment. Those four structures came in at a little over $1.1 million."

Murphy said the original plan called for the construction of an administration building as well as the seven other structures. The administration building was constructed, but some other work was postponed due to high costs.

"This should wrap it up," Murphy said. "What we have just bid out, unless we have some unforeseen delays which was plenty up around there. But we should be through with this by the end of the year."

Murphy said that in 2020, the city approved a bid for the administration building.

"We went out for bids in the first quarter of 2020," Murphy said. "The bid came in higher than we anticipated on the complex building. That bid came in at roughly about $2.9 million. We had borrowed from USDA $3.8 million. So, that only gave us $900,000 to finish those seven buildings. I advise the council back then if we had enough cash surpluses coming in that we could pay cash for part of those buildings and so we went forward with project."

Murphy said rising construction costs put the 2022 cost of the four buildings at more than the original $900,000 bid for the seven.

"What we're doing right now we're $200,000 over that and we only doing four buildings and the reason is because the escalation in material costs and construction costs," Murphy said.
He said the total price of the work on all the buildings will be about $5 million, about $500,000 more than the original estimate.

"It's just simply because of everything that went on," Murphy said. "Other than that, it's been a good project. Everything is going well. And the council has done a great job in managing expenses and moving this thing forward."

He said the administration building already completed will include a fortified safe area where workers can stay during a hurricane or other emergency and be ready to respond after the disaster.

"That building was planned out to where we could sleep over 100 people and it's got a full kitchen, laundry and shower facility and it's self-contained with portable generation," Murphy said. "We were really planning for that because that's been one of our greatest obstacles that we incur with storm restoration is when you're bringing in outside workers is trying to find a place to house them to keep them while they're working. In this way we will be able to give them our own facility."