A Message from Rebecca Bridges Rice, Board President

Dear Members, 

I’d like to give you an update where we are in the construction project for our new facilities.

As has been reported, in late February we broke ground. In late March we relocated the historic Kline’s Cafe, and on April 1st we started construction. The building relocation and recent weather events have caused a delay for completion of now slated for August 2022.

In engineering, a foundation is the part of a structure that connects a building to the ground. The foundation distributes the building’s weight load evenly across the earth, so no part of the soil is over-burdened. A foundation anchors the structure against natural forces, which include hurricanes, strong winds, storms, tornadoes, earthquakes, and more. Buildings need to be built on a solid plane—and the foundation provides exactly that.

Depending on the nature of the structure, there are several types of foundations- shallow and deep. For our commercial project, we are using deep pier foundation on grade beams.  In a pier and beam foundation, a concrete pier is reinforced with steel rebar, forming a strong cage within the pier. The piers are set atop a concrete pad reinforced with steel.

Because we are building weighty structures made of concrete and steel on sand and water, the depth of the piers and beams is 90 feet. Once the piers are completed (next two weeks), you will see the concrete foundation poured one slab at a time. There are two slabs, one on the northern lot and another with a larger footprint in the southern lot.  Completing the slabs will take approximately three weeks.

Stay tuned for June as I continue to update you as our construction progress starts to show vertical direction.

Respectfully,

Rebecca Bridges Rice
President of the Board