Costs and delays continue to climb for Chatham County’s sorely-needed 911 and emergency operations headquarters project.
Last May, county commissioners and the county chairman — who was facing re-election — donned hard hats and shovels at a celebratory ground-breaking ceremony at the future site. Two weeks later, The Current reported that a contractor had not yet been hired to build the nearly 83,000-square-foot facility because the county’s first round of bidding fell through.
As of Jan. 8, over seven months later, there is still no contractor for the project.
The “Multi-Agency Public Safety Facility” has been in discussion for over a decade and is intended to address the urgent needs of the growing county of 300,000. The site will house a brand new 911 dispatch center, emergency operations center during hurricanes, and non-emergency dispatch.
The current emergency operations center, where officials plan their response during hurricanes, is not able to withstand Category 3 storms or higher, according to assessments dating back to 2017.
The first round of bidding for the new facility ended in April 2024 after Chatham County received only one bid. Officials wanted more competition, so they rejected the sole bid and started a prequalification process to get more offers, which ended in June 2024.
The county then solicited bids from its pre-qualified companies, which resulted in four bids in September 2024, according to public contract documents.
All the bids were rejected. The documents do not state why.
As of last month, Chatham County went through another round of pre-qualification to solicit bidders. After this, the county will solicit bids for a third time.
The head-spinning process follows years of planning and rising costs for the facility. The last estimate put expected construction costs at $89 million and two to three years to build once a contractor is hired, according to county spokesperson Will Peebles.
The Current reported last year that workers at the Chatham County 911 Center, led by longtime employee Diane Pinckney, said the center was a “toxic workplace” and struggling with low morale. Pinckney and Commission Chairman Chester Ellis, who was re-elected last November, have promised the new public safety center — with state-of-the-art equipment and room to grow — as a solution to those problems.
Ellis has said that the county hosted the ground-breaking ceremony last May not because of politics, but because the commission would lose out on $8 million in funding if they did not host it by that deadline.
“What we did is save the money,” Ellis told The Current last year. “The staff will tell you that when the feds started giving us money, one thing we don’t do is give it back.”
On Friday, members of the Chatham County Commission will be asked to vote on a $71,140 change order to its contract with the architectural firm tasked with designing the massive 911 center.
“We’re still in the design phase,” according to Chatham County spokesperson Will Peebles. “We’ll know the total cost once the design is finalized and a contractor is awarded.”
The contractor, Architects Design Group, based in Florida was first hired in 2018 with a $1.9 million contract. That contract has increased to approximately $4.5 million as of last year, following five similar change orders.
Political fights
The public safety facility has been a lightning rod for political fights over spending and accusations of improper influence.
Chatham County approved a program management contract in August 2023 for $1.3 million to Atlanta-based AECOM, H.J. Russell & Company, and RG Media Affiliates for a variety of projects. The contract ballooned to over $3 million as the companies took on management of the public safety facility construction in January 2024.
During an Aug. 25, 2023, meeting, District 4 Commissioner Pat Farrell questioned why the county did not work with its own in-house engineering firm to save costs, according to the meeting minutes.
“I’m troubled by the concept of hiring a for-profit engineering firm to basically take over the operations … when that’s what the purpose of a county engineer is,” Farrell said at the time.
Ellis, the chairman, attracted controversy over his support of the project management partnership because the president of RG Media, Robert Gould, served as Ellis’ campaign manager in 2020 and 2024. Ellis also received nearly $5,000 in campaign donations from H.J. Russell or its employees.
District 6 Commissioner Aaron “Adot” Whitely asked Ellis to recuse himself. Ellis refused.
“There’s nothing I have to disclose in here. None of these companies are connected to me in no kind of how. No kind of way. . . . Nobody at AECOM . . . nobody at Russell is connected to me in no kind of how,” Ellis said on Aug. 25, 2023.
