Commissioner Rob Peck
Press Release
The long awaited Clay County Veterans Park is one step closer to becoming a reality. At a ceremonial ground breaking on Friday, June 14th, Clay County Commissioners were flanked by members of the American Legion Post 532 and VFW Post 6812. The well attended ground breaking came shortly after Board Chairman, Dr. Rob Peck, signed the contract for construction with Cork Howard Construction out of Marietta, GA. Earlier that morning, the Clay County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved the Fiscal Year 2024-2025 Budget which included an appropriation for $1.3M for construction.
In February of 2023, initial design and cost estimates had the project slated to cost approximately $1.2M. What started as a public/private venture to build a new Park for the Veteran’s organizations to both honor the service men and women of our country while simultaneously allowing a location for programs such as Veteran’s Day, Memorial Day and 9-11, has been a labor of love for those involved in its design. Generous donations from the community and local businesses were instrumental in covering much of the engineer and architectural fees of the project. The plan itself was scaled back from its initial design in an effort to curb cost. Schematic plans and architectural renderings of the project were presented at last November’s Veterans Day Service held at the location of the new park. Since that time, staff has worked with CDH Architecture, specifically, Chuck Holmes, a veteran himself, to finalize bid ready plans.
The plans were put out to bid multiple times, with no local bidders. Ultimately, Cork Howard Construction was accepted as the lowest qualified bidder. During the regularly scheduled June 6, 2024 meeting of the Clay County BOCs, Cork Howard’s nearly $1.3M bid was officially accepted. Authorization was also given to sign the agreement following some small changes within the contract itself and final review and approval by County Attorney Merinda Woody. Because the cost of the scaled down project came in higher than hoped and not far off the February 2023 estimate, staff worked hard to value engineer the Veterans Park prior to acceptance of the bid. At the end of the day, the substantial cuts in the overall design yielded no significant savings in expenses due to continually rising prices from sub-contractors and costs of materials. As a result, the county moved forward with the before mentioned bid.
Construction of the Veterans Park is set to begin July 1, 2024 with 22 weeks allowed for completion. Substantial completion is expected by November 25, 2024, though, the county is hopeful that the park will be ready by Veteran’s Day, November 11, 2024. While no work is set to begin prior to the contract date of 7/1, residents may notice some mobilization of resources ahead of the construction beginning. Donations are continuing to be accepted with money going towards enhancements of the current phase of development and/or future additions to the site. Also, if you are a veteran, family member or friend of a veteran, and would like to have a personalized brick paver placed at the Veterans Park, applications are available at the Moss Memorial Library, Clay County Progress, Clay County Register of Deeds and Clay County HR Office.
If you have any additional questions, please contact Betty Bradley at Clay County Government via email, bbradley@claync.us or by phone, 828-389-0089 Monday through Friday between the hours of 8-12 and 1-5PM.
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