Ag center plan changed
By Steve Herring
Published in News on March 23, 2015 1:46 PM
Converting what had been destined to be office space in the county's proposed $14 million agriculture/convention center into a larger assembly area is not expected to add to the project's cost.
The county agreed to increasing the size of the assembly area as part of a joint agreement with Goldsboro, which will provide land for the center and to help with funding.
For now, Wayne County Manager George Wood is calling it a "break-even" proposition, but adds that he thinks it could actually reduce the cost.
No work will be done until the funding for the project is in hand.
"By state law we have to able to show, before we accept a bid, that we can pay for it," Wood said.
He said he is not certain when initial schematics for the two-story, 56,000-square-foot center will be ready.
Wayne County commissioners want to have the initial schematics before they go in search of public and private funding.
"We have thrown (architect Kristen M. Hess of HH Architecture of Raleigh) a few curve balls because we started on one site, moved to another, and now we are changing the size of the assembly area," Wood said.
The center will house the Cooperative Extension Service, Farm Service Agency, Natural Resources Conservation Service and Wayne County Soil and Water.
It would include classrooms and an assembly area.
The Center for Environmental Farming and Cherry Farms administration were going to be housed in the new center. That is no longer the case because of the move to the new site, Wood said.
"That freed up 7,500 square feet," Wood said. "Now, 400 of that, we are going to move the (Goldsboro Travel and) Tourism office in. But the other 7,100 square feet we are adding to the assembly area.
"So it is making it much larger there, so even if she was getting close on that, she would have to change that because that is going from office space to assembly area."
Wood said Ms. Hess agreed that was what needed to be done to make it a "far nicer facility."
"We could have shrunk the size of the building and saved some money," he said. "But that would not have been the right thing to do. If we were going to do it, it needed to be bigger.
"We really didn't get into the timing of it at that point, we were just trying to get was there an additional cost, or less cost on that square footage."
The county has set aside $4 million for the center, which commissioners had initially planned to build on a former state-owned dairy farm on Old Smithfield Road.
However, earlier this month, the county and Goldsboro inked a joint agreement that included the center.
As part of the deal, the city will give the county 12 of the 18 acres it owns on Wayne Memorial Drive next to Wayne Community College for the agriculture center, which would serve a dual purpose as a convention center.
The city would use the remaining six acres in an attempt to lure a hotel there.
The agreement hinges on state legislators agreeing to a one-percent increase, from 5 to 6 percent, in the city's hotel occupancy tax.
The city would provide 33 percent of those new revenues for the first 20 years of the center and 25 percent thereafter.
That money, about $220,000 annually, would be used by the county to help fund the center and for maintenance and operations.
The revenue would put the county in a position of being able to borrow at least $2 million -- in effect giving the county $6 million to put toward the center, Wood said.
In exchange, the county agreed to increase the size of the assembly area to 14,000 feet -- close to the 16,000 square feet that an earlier study had recommended for a city convention center.
The assembly areas could seat 800 people banquet-style and 1,000 stadium-style.
The county also agreed to provide the office space for Travel and Tourism that would promote the center.
Wood said that Ms. Hess knew about the plan to change sites and took a tour of the new location prior to the announcement.
She looked at the nearby WCC campus as well.
Wood said he had wanted her to see how a parking lot at the back of WCC could tie into the center's parking area.
"The size of the parking for the (center's) day-to-day staff isn't going to be what drives the size of the parking lot -- it's the events at night," he said. "With the events at night, we can use some of their (WCC) parking. So there is already a savings right there. But we will have to tie it together with a new walkways and things like that."
The county plans to use the design/build/bridge method, a variation of the design/build method, to construct the center.
Under the design/build/bridge method, HH Architecture can only design up to 35 percent of the full design. In addition, the firm will be responsible for setting forth the design criteria for the complete plans.
The county took that route because it does not yet have the money to build the center.
After the county raises the money, it can request proposals from design/build firms to finish the final 65 percent of design, including full drawings, specifications and a guaranteed price to build the center.