The Stanly County Board of Commissioners approved funding for a new West Stanly Senior Center building on July 7. Photo courtesy StanlyTV

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ALBEMARLE — Stanly County is making a financial contribution to the construction costs for the new West Stanly Senior Center in Locust.

At the Stanly County Board of Commissioners meeting on Monday night, the board unanimously voted to approve a budget amendment appropriating $750,000 into the county’s current operating budget to reimburse the City of Locust for the senior center construction project.

County Manager Andy Lucas explained that an agreement between the county and Locust was arranged over two years ago.

“This has been a couple of years in the making,” Lucas said. “This is actually a unique partnership between us and the City of Locust to construct a new senior center adjacent to their current library facility.”

The county’s financial portion was originally estimated to handle around 50% of construction costs, although the pricing increased as the bidding process led to higher costs.

On June 12, the Locust City Council approved a $2.59 million bid by Cinderella Partners, Inc. of Indian Trail that came in at over $2 million lower than the highest bid of $4.6 million; eight bids in total were received from interested contractors.

Cinderella Partners is scheduled to begin work on the project next week, with an estimated completion date set for 12 to 15 months from now.

“We’re hoping to be in it by next summer,” Commissioner Scott Efird said. “We’ve already got a lot of the components with the audio and visual stuff, and they’re going to start the construction on July 14.”

Located at Ray Kennedy Drive right beside the Locust Library, the 3,500-square-foot West Stanly Senior Center will have a ribbon-cutting ceremony hosted by the City of Locust on Thursday morning at 10 a.m.

Locust’s current West Stanly Senior Center at 213 Town Center Drive next to Ace Hardware will remain open until the new building opens up next year.

Lucas said that wanted to present this information to the board as a regular agenda item as a reminder of the arrangement between the county and city.

“Potentially, we could have put this on the consent agenda, but because it was such a large number and a lot of board members weren’t here at the time, I felt like we just needed to present it for transparency purposes.”

The county manager clarified that the $750,000 from the county will be for construction costs only and not factor into any funding needed for the inside of the building.

The Stanly County Board of Commissioners is set to hold its next regular meeting on Aug. 4 at 6 p.m. inside the Gene McIntyre Meeting Room at Stanly County Commons.