(Seguin) – Plans are moving along steadily for Guadalupe County’s newest building project. Guadalupe County Judge Kyle Kutscher says the county for the last several months has been tackling the design and start of construction for its future Development Center.
“The Guadalupe County Development Center is something that we have been talking about and planning for the last few years. We are actually in the design process right now working toward construction numbers and hopefully, a groundbreaking by the end of the year but the Development Center would be a newly constructed building sitting at the corner of Interstate 10 and North Guadalupe Street on county owned property that will at an estimated 12,000 square feet building right now and again, in preliminary design. But that building would house our road and bridge department, our environmental health office, our permitting portion of our fire marshal’s office which is required for commercial development, our GIS mapping department as well as our newly created county engineer’s office. Those offices right now are split up between multiple facilities and the current road and bridge office/environmental health office is just an old building that needs tremendous amount of work and is not sufficient in the amount of space that is available. So, trying to make it convenient for individuals that need to come frequent – a facility to meet with multiple departments especially when it surrounds development and permitting,” said Kutscher.
Kutscher says if all things continue as scheduled, the county could possibly break ground on the project by the end of the year.
“Two weeks ago, we selected a contractor after a vetting process, an open call, had a number of contractors who were qualified come forward for interviews. After that scoring process took place, we selected the Koehler Company. We are doing a construction manager at risk two step process and all that means is we go through that initial construction contractor selection process to work with commissioner’s court and our architect that we selected last year to put more thought and detail into the planning process, and we are in that planning process right now – design development. By the time, we get into the beginning of July, we should have a more concrete development plan and design plan to give documents to our contractor where the Koehler company can then go out and get bids from sub-contractors which will probably take, we are estimating about two months and then we would hopefully, be coming back September, October– timeframe — to secure a contract not to exceed price for the construction of that facility,” said Kutscher.
Kutscher notes that only those departments he mentioned will be housed in this new facility. He says the county’s growing pains are demanding the much-needed elbow room.
“We are building expansion space into that facility but only for those departments. The plan is to not move or relocate other departments into that facility in the future. We do want to be smart about the development of that property and that building project in particular because of construction costs now, rising cost of labor and all those things. We want to have expansion space built in, but it will only be for the future growth of those named departments – maybe one small department if we had to relocated something else but that hasn’t been a point of discussion now,” said Kutscher.
Now while the new Guadalupe County Development Center will alleviate some of those growing pains, many others have also questioned the future of other buildings such as the Guadalupe County Justice Center and Guadalupe County Courthouse.
Kutscher says the expectation is that the county will continue to grow rapidly. He says ensuring that they can accommodate that growth has been the basis of its long-range planning from the very beginning.
“In the future, long term as the county grows, its operation based on need and population growth out in the county, we did, a few years ago, purchase the 134 acres across from the sheriff’s office and there are long term plans to build a government center type building that would house courts, multiple county facilities. That would probably change in the future the outlook of what the Justice Center operations were, but we are committed to making sure that the county courthouse downtown stays in downtown Seguin and is used. We spent a lot of time and energy and a lot of taxpayer money remodeling that and moved in at the end of 2016 beginning of 2017 so we are going to make sure that the county courthouse stays occupied, stays used and stays in its location but as the county grows long term, the three stories, 75,000 square foot Justice Center just won’t be able to accommodate all of the courts – district, county courts along with specialty CPS courts as well as our district county clerk, veterans service office and other departments like HR that we have in there so there will be some modifications made in the future but we will definitely do that throughout public settings, open workshops and we want to hear feedback from the public when we go through making those decisions,” said Kutscher.
Kutscher says the new building will be located just south of the Guadalupe County Sheriff’s Office. He says the building will serve as the featured entry point to that portion of property on North Guadalupe Street.
“It will be on the same side as road and bridge. So, if you are looking at that property, we built a new lube center that is parallel to Interstate 10 and the road and bridge shop is perpendicular to Interstate 10 parallel to North Guadalupe. Looking at that building, it’s going to be set back in that corner facing the corner of I-10 and North Guadalupe Street — opened up to the southwest direction but on the same side,” said Kutscher.
While the county moves forward with plans for its development center, it is also busy putting the finishing touches on the expansion and renovation project of the Guadalupe County Sheriff’s Office. Officials say they hope to officially wrap up the project in the next few weeks.