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The price for relocating the animal shelter in the City of Athens has now been set.

During the Athens City Council’s December meeting, the council members unanimously accepted a bid from Roberts Roberts LLC out of Chattanooga to do the construction work on the future home of the newly dubbed Larry Dean Wallace Sr. Animal Shelter and Adoption Center. The bid price was the lowest of three who made an offer, coming in at $2,106,003, and the council members also accepted the add-on price to move the Athens Spay and Neuter Clinic into the building for an additional $154,716. The latter cost will be picked up by the McMinn Regional Humane Society.

The plan in place is to move the animal shelter from its current location to 320 South Jackson Street, the former home of The Daily Post-Athenian. Even with the bid accepted, there is no specific timeline on when everything will be complete and the new shelter will be in operation, but it was noted that the acceptance of the bid began a 300 day window to complete everything.

A notice to proceed was delivered to Robert Roberts the Tuesday after the meeting.

“Between then and the end of the year we’ll be placing orders for a majority of the materials,” Projects Manager Kevin Helms noted during the meeting.

“We want to lock in everything we can prior to Jan. 1,” Public Works Director Ben Burchfield added at the time. “As anyone in construction knows, there’s a lot of stuff set to go up (on Jan. 1). We’re trying to get ahead of all that.”

Burchfield added that he was happy with the bid on moving the spay and neuter clinic, which is being funded by the MRHS.

“The price of the alternate was very, very low relative to the cost per square foot of construction,” he said. “The scope of the project allows them to get a really good price on that transition.”

Meanwhile, the overall cost to make the move had Burchfield and Helms trying to find ways to trim some prices where they could.

“We looked at a number of ways to get the cost down,” he said, noting that the move is from “an operation that is fragmented, marginally over 6,000 square feet, to more than 17,000 square feet. That’s a lot of stuff to deal with. Every measure we have taken on the review is to try to mitigate anything we don’t absolutely need.”

He pointed out that Monroe County is also in the process of building a brand new shelter that will measure about 12,000 square feet and the Monroe County Friends of Animals has set a fundraising goal of $4.1 million.

“Where we are today is a good number,” he added. “We’ve had a lot of support from the community.”

Burchfield noted that the city has not worked with Robert Roberts in the past, but that the company was the second lowest bidder on the nearly-finished public works building.

The building being named after Larry Wallace was originally proposed earlier this year and was made official in November. The naming came about due to the extensive assistance Wallace gave to the shelter and the MRHS, including on getting the process of moving the location underway.

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