The city has an agreement with Fordice Construction to build a new animal shelter.

The Vicksburg Board of Mayor and Aldermen on Monday authorized Mayor George Flaggs Jr. to sign a contract with Fordice for the project. No starting date has been set pending a preconstruction meeting next week with Fordice and city officials.

“I gave the contractor the keys to the building last week so they’re already working and figuring out how they’re going to work this thing,” Community Development Director Jeff Richardson said. “He’s got to order everything and he’s got to figure out when his delivery dates will be.”

City employees, Richardson said, will do the site preparation work.

Fordice was the low bidder on the project with a bid of $1,263,700. The bid included one alternate, or extra project, to install lights for the shelter’s parking lot for $10,800. Flaggs said when the bids were open in January that the total cost for the project will be about $1.3 million, which included the project engineer’s cost. That cost is separate from the construction bid, he said.

The budget for the project was $1.67 million.

The January bid opening was the second on the project. The board on Oct. 6 rejected bids from Fordice and J E Stevens Construction Group of Jackson because they were over the project budget. Some of the plans and specifications for the project were later modified and the city re-advertised the project on Nov. 22.

City officials have considered a new animal shelter for several years. The current shelter is more than 50 years old and sits on a tract of land on Old Mill Road adjacent to the Vicksburg Fire Department’s training center in the Kings community.

The shelter is in a flood zone and is subject to being surrounded by flash flooding. It was threatened by the 2019 flood and animals had to be evacuated in the 2011 flood. City officials considered several potential sites, including city property in a section of Cedar Hill Cemetery off Sky Farm Avenue.

On Feb. 21, 2020, Flaggs, other city officials and city resident Marilyn Terry, who provided a recommendation for a shelter building, toured the former U.S. Rubber Reclaiming plant off U.S. 61 South, which is owned by the city and located in a flood zone, and a site in the 2100 block of Oak Street, south of Depot Street.

Problems with the Oak Street property forced city officials to remove the site from consideration. The board also considered a 14.3-acre tract at 4211 Rifle Range Road owned by Cappaert Holdings LLP, but the city said it could not afford the $1.5 million to buy the land and build the shelter.

The board in September 2020 accepted the donation of property and a metal building at 4845 U.S. 61 South from the Ernest Thomas family as the site for a new shelter.