Action taken by the Apalachicola Board of City Commissioners at their monthly meeting last night moved the city closer to realizing their goal of completing the long anticipated renovation of the Scipio Creek Boat Basin.
Commissioners moved to authorize the mayor’s signature on construction documents between Pro-Steel Buildings, Inc., out of Tallahassee and the City of Apalachicola.
Pro-Steel’s role is to act as the city’s construction manager over the project and to put local contractors and vendors to work so that those dollars can circle back into the Franklin County community.
According the City Administrator Betty Webb, the project had to be scaled back a bit from the original plan because of cost considerations. “They originally designed a Cadillac plan on a Pinto budget”, Webb said.
The original design included a haul-out-slip, off loading docks, and an ice handling facility, along with a maintenance shop and an open air market to sell fresh caught seafood right off the boats. The shop had to be deleted from the project and only a shell will be constructed of the ice house. Also no longer part of the project is the Department of Agriculture $200,000 plans to relocate to the outside of the basin the barge used to transport oyster shells to replant Apalachicola Bay.
The project is being funded in part by the Federal Economic Development Administration in the tune of $1,855,000, with the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity picking up the tab for another $484,596, and the city topping it off with $215,000, for a total cost of $2,554,596 to renovate the basin.
Once the project is completed around late November 2014, it’s expected to create up to 44 new seafood related job.
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