By Shannon McFarlin News Director
Paris, Tenn—At a busy meeting Tuesday, the Henry County Building and Grounds Committee gave the green light to one renovation project and heard an update from local engineer Patrick Smith on the status of the bell tower on the county courthouse.
The committee has been tasked with finding solutions to the county’s aging government structures.
One project that is planned is renovation of the former rehab building at 311 E. Wood St., which currently is under lease with West Tennessee Healthcare and owned by the Henry County General Hospital District. The committee proposes to purchase the building and to move the county’s juvenile court and the TRC (Tennessee Rehabilitation) program in there.
At the January meeting, the committee authorized a purchase price of up to $120,000.
The committee on Tuesday gave the go-ahead to the TLM and Ross/Witt firms to move forward with preparation of a preliminary proposal for renovation of the building. Both firms are familiar in Henry County, with TLM and Ross/Witt both doing work for the county and Paris school systems.
TLM and Ross/Witt prepared a joint proposal for the project and were one of seven firms to present proposals. The committee had asked Rob Goad, Director of the Paris-Henry County Industrial Committee, for his expertise on how best to rank the proposals. Under the process laid out by Goad, four proposals were ranked at the top, with the TLM and Ross/Witt proposal ranked number 1.
After much discussion over the past year, the committee has narrowed its focus to construction of a new courthouse/government building. The building would be located on county-owned property on Hwy. 79S.
Plans under discussion involve shutting down the courthouse annex on W. Washington St. altogether due to its deteriorated condidtion. Also called for is a major reshuffling of offices and employees at other county government buildings.
In other business:
– Smith, who is President of the L.I. Smith firm in Paris, updated the committee on the condition of the courthouse bell tower. Personnel at the Smith firm not only inspected the tower but scanned it and created a 3D model which was shown in a visual presentation for the committee.
Smith said his personnel used a drone and aerial photography to capture the images “and we went back up there a few weeks ago to scan the bell in detail”. He said the day they were there, winds of 18 mph were evident “and you could feel the tower sway. It will end up on the lawn sooner rather than later”, pointing to a hole in the tower causing it to lift.
The bell tower has been deteriorating from inside, he said, noting that, “If something happens to it, it’s a good thing we have this record of it in case we have to recreate it.”
Smith said in the process of working on this project, “I’ve fallen in love with the geometry of this. It’s so symmetrical. It’s a work of art.”
The courthouse was completed in 1896.
–Henry County Emergency Management Agency Director Ron Watkins reported on plans to build a maintenance shop for the recycling center. “This has been an ongoing need since I started in this position in 2007,” he said.
A fire damaged the recycling center a few months ago and the construction will be paid for from insurance money left over. “We spent the insurance money as best we could and we had money left over.”
The project will total $143,000 and it will allow recycling center personnel to make their own repairs of equipment.
Photo: Patrick Smith, standing, presents bell tower update to Chairman Marty Visser and members Pam Martin and Gatlin Primrose. Shannon McFarlin photo.