PIGEON FORGE — As the City Commission plans to replace the buildings on the municipal complex, it’s keeping a close eye on construction costs and interest rates that have risen over the past few years while those plans have developed.
The city has been working on buying adjacent property to expand the campus and to come up with plans for new facilities, including city hall, the fire department headquarters and the police department.
The first focus has been on the fire hall and police department.
While there were some early discussions about putting the two together, the plans now call for them to be separate facilities.
That means they can spread out some fairly hefty new debts on the general fund.
The police department is expected to cost about $25 million, and the fire department is expected to cost about $15 million.
That would mean about $3.5 million in new debt service altogether for those two products, and that doesn’t include the new city hall.
But with interest rates at their highest level in decades, there’s a chance those costs could come down in the meantime, and that they can get different rates for each project because the bonds will be staggered across several years.
“It’ll definitely be a balancing act,” Finance Director Dennis Clabo said.
Pigeon Forge officials have traveled to several cities to review newer facilities, and came back with features they hoped to include as they build new homes for most of the city offices and services.
Police Chief Richard Catlett said they’ve tried to design the proposed new police headquarters based on the workflow for officers — the holding area and evidence storage will be near the sally port, for example.
The fire department will have more bays, and expanded training area and other features.
The city is acquiring adjacent property as part of the expansion, but it’s still going to take careful planning to keep all the existing services operational.
Right now it looks like the wing of city hall that houses the meeting rooms for workshops would come down first, and the new fire hall would then be built there.
“It’s like building a jigsaw puzzle,” architect Mike Smelcer said.
“It’s jumping back and forth but we’re trying to keep everybody in operation.”
Contact Jeff at jfarrell@themountainpress.com or Twitter at @jeffmtnpress
