HCEC Breaks Ground on New Home
By Greg Ritchie
Messenger Reporter
HOUSTON COUNTY – You may have noticed some new construction going on at the headquarters of Houston County Electric Co-Op (HCEC) along Crockett’s Loop 304. While it may not look like much just yet, the multi-million dollar project is set to be HCEC’s new home, addressing many of the current structure’s issues.
The building complex will be made up of the main office building of 22,589 square feet, a warehouse of 14,400 square feet and a vehicle maintenance shop of 1,980 square feet. The current facility has housed HCEC since the mid 70’s, according to Kathi Calvert.
“We’ve had foundation problems almost since it was constructed. It’s like waking through a funhouse at times – those floors are so uneven and doors don’t shut and you roll around backwards if you have wheels on your chair,” Calvert laughed. “You have to hold yourself to the desk. We’ve also had a lot of flooding issues because of the foundation problems.”
HCEC is focused on providing safe and reliable energy to its members, but the growing costs of maintaining the old facility were starting to mount.
“It needed to be addressed and we kicked the can down the road for a long time, trying to make it work because our members bear the cost of everything we do since we’re a member-owned, non-profit organization. We just got to the breaking point where we had to look at our facilities,” Calvert said.
This year has already seen several close calls when it came to severe weather. While the promised snow storms and devastating winds passed Houston County by, HCEC was nonetheless working behind the scenes to keep the lights on, ready for whatever Mother Nature might have planned. The new facility promises to raise their readiness for storms, both large and small.
“We are going to have a hardened area, or a building within a building, so we can sustain operations through a hurricane or tornado. Our intent is to be up and running to provide service to our members and restore service during those major events,” Calvert noted. “That hardened space will be of tremendous value. We have to keep everything going so we can keep everyone else going.”
The project will come in at a cost of around $15 million, but should set HCEC up for the next several decades. Along with a more modern and comfortable space to work, Calvert said there will be more parking, wheelchair access and an expanded room for community use.
“We will also have a bigger and better community room space. Our current community room is used by many organizations across the county,” Calvert said. “We wanted to incorporate the needs of the community as well, such as non-profit groups would have a place to meet.”
No construction project ever comes in exactly on-time, and while Calvert and her team aren’t packing any boxes, the move-in is already looming, with the million-and-one details to be made ready for their new home.
“Our target move-in date is November of this year, so we have a lot of work to do between now and November,” Calvert concluded.
Greg Ritchie can be reached at [email protected]
