Whitfield County commissioners vote to build new administration building

Published 10:49 am Thursday, March 27, 2025

For the past six years, Whitfield County administrative offices have been in the Wells Fargo Bank building in downtown Dalton.

County commissioners voted 4-1 at their latest meeting to seek a request for proposals for a design-build agreement for a new four-floor county building to house those offices. Board Chairman Jevin Jensen, who typically votes only when there is a tie, voted against the proposal.

Both Jensen and Commissioner Barry Robbins expressed concern about the need for a fourth floor.

“We will not even occupy all of three floors,” Robbins said.

But other commissioners said the fourth floor is needed for future growth.

“Once we building this, there’s no adding on,” said Commissioner Greg Jones.

Three of the floors will be finished. The fourth will not be finished until the county needs to occupy it.

The building will be on the grassy area next to the county parking deck across from the courthouse where county Administrative Building No. 2 once stood.

County administrative offices have been in the top three floors of the Wells Fargo Bank building since the commissioners decided to close Administrative Building No. 2 in 2019. That building, at the corner of King Street and Selvidge Street, opened in 1967 as a church and by 2018 had a number of structural issues. The Dalton Fire Department sent the county a three-page letter in 2018 detailing the ways the building failed to meet the fire code.

The county currently leases the third through fifth floors of the Wells Fargo building as well as some space on the first floor for $18,386 a month.

“We are spending a lot of money for the Wells Fargo building, and it’s not ideal,” said Jones. “It was designed to be a bank, not a county building. Plus, it’s for sale now.”

Robbins cited the potential sale of the building as a reason to move on despite his concerns about the size of the building.

Jensen said the commissioners looked at buying the Wells Fargo building as well as leasing or buying other downtown buildings.

“I am not a fan of new government buildings and am adamantly opposed to ones more than 2.1 times larger than the current staff is utilizing,” Jensen said after the meeting.” In my opinion, our county is unlikely to grow this much in the next 50-60 years. However, I don’t have the votes to stop it. The staff has recommended funding the building with bonds/debt, adding interest costs to the actual building costs. Although we have a fund balance, the total cost of the building would drop us below the minimum level recommended by Association of County Commissioners (of Georgia) and others.”

County Administrator Robert Sivick said that when he was hired in 2021 he was “alarmed by the office space situation.”

“That stemmed from the condition of the county’s rented space and the fact it was renting space at all,” he said. “Most of all, I was alarmed at the absence of a plan to address the office space situation other than maintaining the status quo. I managed local governments in four states coast to coast and have never seen or even heard of a local government renting office space on a permanent basis. That’s because unlike private sector organizations, Whitfield County has perpetual existence. As such it cannot shut down operations or relocate them outside Whitfield County. From a fiscal standpoint, renting space creates a situation where every dollar spent on rent and maintenance only serves to enrich the building’s owner and provides no return or benefit to taxpayers for such investment.”

He said he commissioned a study of the condition of the Wells Fargo building.

“The building’s owner was amenable to selling the structure to the county,” he said. “However, in order for the Board of Commissioners to make a wise and informed decision, the cost of bringing the building up to acceptable standards was needed. In making a decision, the Board of Commissioners also needed to be made aware of other options. One such option was purchasing and renovating other buildings for use as county offices. Because Dalton/Whitfield County has a manufacturing rather than office economy, the number of available buildings was limited. County staff and commissioners in groups of less than a quorum toured several buildings but none proved suitable when considering the amount of available office space, cost of renovation and location.”

Sivick said construction of a new building will “allow the county to design and build a structure to its specifications and eliminate problems arising from the need to renovate an existing building.”

He said for more than a year county staff and commissioners in groups of less than a quorum consulted with architects and construction management experts to discuss constructing a building.

Sivick said plans call for not only bringing the administrative offices housed in the Wells Fargo building into the new building but other offices in other parts of the county as well.

“That will enable us to more efficiently and effectively utilize this building’s space and eliminate costly and obsolete structures,” he said.