BRMEMC New Headquarters Project

The facility Blue Ridge Mountain EMC occupies was constructed in 1955. There have been two major renovations of the existing facility, one in the mid-1970s and the most recent in 1995. In 2000, the EMC constructed a stand-alone vehicle maintenance facility. The EMC currently stands on approximately 14 acres of land and has eight buildings situated on the campus.

Our new headquarters facility will be built on a portion of 104 acres, and will include new administration, operations, warehouse, garage and other critical facilities. The site will have separate entrances for customers and heavy equipment, with emergency egress onto Timberline Drive. Eventually, BRMEMC hopes to sell off unused portions of the acreage to interested parties, which will allow us to pay down the overall debt for the project. The same is planned for our existing headquarters campus.

Why build now?

Space needed: BRMEMC is simply out of room. We have been short on office space for quite some time. We outgrew our warehouse years ago, and we have too many people cramped into too small a workspace. We also need additional employee and customer parking.

Minimal impact on members: Interest rates have dropped to all-time lows in the past couple of years, and we plan to finance the remainder of our headquarters project with a long-term loan from USDA-RUS. This RUS loan of $20 million at 4 percent interest will result in approximately $1,150,000 in annual principal and interest payments. Using this figure, the cost per member per year (as of June 2011) is approximately $23, or less than $2 per month per member as a result of the cost of the new headquarters.

Competitive bidding: We have had more than 20 general contractors express interest in bidding on our project, and we are confident we will receive very competitive pricing as a result. Other large projects in the area have bid 20 percent to 30 percent lower than expected, and we hope to capitalize on this trend, to the benefit of our members.

Safety: Brasstown Creek Road and Sycamore Street in the city of Young Harris run through the middle of our current campus, which creates a significant safety concern. We have high volumes of traffic made up of heavy equipment, tractor-trailers and other vehicles loading and unloading on a daily basis. At our new headquarters, heavy equipment and other work-related vehicles will be segregated from general customer traffic. This segregation will be facilitated by a separate entrance/exit, with acceleration and deceleration lanes and improved sight distances at this intersection.

Local economic boost: Phase 1 of our project resulted in a contract with Panattoni Construction for the site grading and DOT work. Panattoni then subcontracted work to Capital Grading out of Fannin County. Capital Grading hired a number of local workers (around 70 percent) and used various local subcontractors for portions of the on-site work, including hauling, gravel, concrete, timbering and other services.

The subcontractors include TRC Trucking (Fannin County), Byers Well Drilling (Union County), Gray Logging (Union County), Holloway Trenching (Fannin County), Southern Concrete Materials (Union/Clay) and Shuler Clearing Co. (Clay County).

All the jobs and subcontracting opportunities listed above have direct economic impact on local companies. In addition, there are secondary economic benefits to our community because these subcontractors purchase fuel, supplies and other materials locally. Workers are eating, living and shopping here, which also increases local revenues and contributes to a more stable local economy.