Members of the Forrest County Board of Supervisors are still mulling over two bids for the Forrest County Sheriff’s Office former substation on East Pine Street, and are expected to meet Thursday with officials from the Historic Hattiesburg Downtown Association to help choose which course of action to take for the building.
“(Board attorney) David Miller and I are going to meet with their executive committee to kind of get their thoughts on those two proposals,” said David Hogan, president of the Forrest County Board of Supervisors. “And then we’ll make a decision at our August 6th board meeting. We just wanted to get some input from them before we made a final decision.”
The two bids to purchase and renovate the building came last month from Clark Technologies ($5,000) and No Good Deed LLC ($25,000). Officials from Clark Technologies have proposed transforming the building into a service station/garage with a restaurant, courtyard and living space, while No Good Deed representatives said they would convert the facility into retail and loft living space.
“I want to see (what the proposals) look like,” HHDA executive director Andrea Saffle said. “That’s a historic property, and we’d like to make sure that (whoever purchases it) keeps it historic.
“So I’m interested in seeing those plans and hearing what the board thinks.”
Hogan said the board’s decision won’t be based solely on price.
“We put out a request for proposals to see how much interest we would get in somebody coming in and rehabbing (the building) and turning it into another downtown asset,” he said in a previous story. “Rather than just selling it to the highest bidder or sitting on it for long-range, we’d love to see if any local developers are interested in having it and doing something with it and making it another asset to the downtown community.”
The former substation, which was used to service and fuel law enforcement vehicles, has been empty since the staff moved in early may to the new substation at the Billy McGee Law Enforcement Complex off U.S. 49.
“(The new substation) is open and functioning really well,” Hogan said. “We were able to use our maintenance employees to construct it, and the road department put in the parking lot, so we were able to do it for much less than what we believe it would have cost through a private contractor.
“It took a little longer, because our maintenance guys have to work on other general maintenance items, but we feel like we saved the taxpayers a lot of money in construction costs by allowing our own people to do it. So far, it seems to be functioning really well for the sheriff’s department.”
