GALLIPOLIS — The administrative offices of the City of Gallipolis will be on the move once again Thursday as they make their way to their new permanent home in the Gallipolis Municipal Building.

The municipal building, located at 333 Third Avenue on a portion of the municipal parking area, will house the city manager’s office, city auditor’s office, code enforcement, tax office, parks and recreation and the city’s water office.

On Thursday, the administrative offices will be closed as the city’s administrative employees move their equipment, office furniture and paperwork from their old home in the Gallia County Job and Family Services Building at 848 Third Avenue to their new facility.

According to Gallipolis City Manager Randy Finney, despite last-minute work that needs to be finished, the move will go forward on Thursday.

“I can’t stop now. We’re in the process of the phones being moved, and we have to move forward,” Finney reported during a regular city commission meeting on Tuesday evening. “We are closed on Thursday. Some people are going to have a hard time dealing with that, but we can’t work and move at the same time. So far it’s going pretty well, but the next three days are going to be trying.”

After the Gallipolis Municipal Offices have had the time needed to settle into their new home, the city will hold a ribbon cutting and grand opening ceremony at 6:15 p.m. on Tuesday, March 19 at the new facility at 333 Third Avenue. A special city commission meeting will follow in the new meeting chambers located in the municipal building.

Finney reported to the Gallipolis City Commission on Tuesday that the remaining work needed to be completed is basically all exterior work, including the completion of the curb in the front of the building, filling in holes and fixing the fleur-de-lis design on the outside of the facility.

Finney reported that, although the city will hold final payment on the contractor, Hoon, Inc., of Athens until the remaining work is completed, overall, he is impressed with their work on the facility.

“Hoon has done a very good job on this building,” Finney said. “Always getting those last finishing touches seems to be tough for everybody to get done, but they’ve done an excellent job. They’ve worked well with us on this project and it really turned out pretty well.”

In addition, the city manager reported that the office space used by the city since their move from the old Gallipolis Municipal Building on Second Avenue in July 2010 will need some minor work before it is turned back over to job and family services.

According to Finney, some painting and cleaning work will need to be completed, as well as the removal and replacement of interior walls, as the space was modified to suit the city’s needs.

“I don’t expect there will be a real big price for this, but they were good enough to let us use that building for a year at no cost, we’ve paid rent for the past five months, and that’s all we’ve paid,” he said.

During Tuesday’s meeting, the commissioners also authorized change order number four with Hoon, Inc., for the construction of the facility.

This change order, in the amount of approximately $35,000, is for excavation work, plumbing and electrical service.

Finney explained that some of the funding will go toward lighting, a new drive-through drawer and other electrical and plumbing work inside the facility, while $6,300 of the change order will be utilized for a trench drain to drain water from around the exterior of the building.

“We’re going to try to get it done this week,” Finney said. “It’ll be a 30-foot trench and we’ll drain it out toward the road. We’re going to put a seven-foot trench out back here and catch that water in the back and drain it toward the storm drain.”

The majority of the change order, or approximately $22,000, can be attributed to foundation work on the building, according to Finney.

“The biggest change order we had was related to the foundation work around here, $22,000. We had to cut down further than we thought we had to, build that back up with dirt,” Finney said.

The total bid package for the entire project was approximately $795,000, and with the four change orders, the cost for construction of the building totals approximately $848,000. Of the approximately $53,000 in change orders, approximately $40,000 of that was spent on excavation work alone, the city manager reported, while stating that he is pleased that the change orders only totaled a little over $50,000, on a project of that size.

“We didn’t do bad on this one,” Finney said.