A planned addition behind the Lowndes County Courthouse could become a favorite lunchtime hangout downtown by this summer.

The Lowndes County Board of Supervisors on Thursday approved a $209,700 bid from T&M Steel Erectors to build an open-air pavilion on the grass lot at the corner of Third Avenue and Sixth Street North, across from Franklin Academy. T&M’s bid was the lowest of eight bids submitted and came in well less than the $250,000 estimate for the project, County Engineer Zach Foster said.

Lowndes County purchased the lot in 2018 from the Randoph Lipscomb estate and later demolished the house that once sat there.
The 30-by-44-foot pavilion will include a hip roof, along with steel columns wrapped in brick, Foster said. The project will also replace sidewalks at Third Avenue and Sixth Street, which Foster said were damaged during the house demolition, and build new sidewalks that will connect to the pavilion.

Foster said he expects the construction contract to be finalized in the next two weeks. After that it will take six to eight weeks for the pre-engineered pavilion materials to arrive for assembly.

“It’s going to be a really nice structure,” said Trip Hairston, president for the board of supervisors. “… Obviously, it’s a public space, so anybody can use it. It gives a place where people can go and have lunch and where we can have various public events. … I think it will be a well-used space for people downtown.”

Hairston said the price tag seems “excessive” for simply building a pavilion, but other factors – such as the sidewalk work and the requirements for the structure’s aesthetics to be in keeping with the courthouse since the property sits in the city’s Downtown Historic District – drove up the price.

“I felt pretty good about the fact we had eight bidders,” he said. “That’s almost unheard of. That keeps a lot of people pretty honest.”

When the county purchased the Lipscomb lot, discussions centered on the potential for expanding courtroom space. Hairston told The Dispatch no plans were ever drawn for such a project, and he does not believe the lot offers enough space to build another courtroom building and the parking it would require.

However, Hairston thinks parking could be added around the pavilion in the future to ease some of the congestion issues the courthouse sees on high-volume court days, like jury selection.

Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.