Tellico Village Public Works is making progress on one major project, but another has been pushed back to the summer as workers await warmer weather.
About 30 additional parking spaces at Tanasi Golf Course are anticipated to be paved around July. Hopes were for Knoxville-based contractor Rogers Group to pave during the golf course’s closure for aeration last month, but Tellico Village Property Owners Association Public Works Director Jeff Gagley said the weather would not cooperate.
“We had our parking lots we were going to do, but that fell through because of that cold snap that came right there when he had to shut down Tanasi for aeration. We couldn’t pave,” Gagley said. “The temperature’s got to be much warmer, so we put that off until later in the summer where we could pave at night while they’re closed and do our work and they stay open during the day.”
Additional spaces will be placed to the left of the current parking area where vehicles park in the grass, he said.
Despite having to push back the project, Gagley said officials knew they were taking a chance to start paving this time of the year.
“We knew it was a chancy move,” Gagley said. “When we bid it out to the contractors we told them there’s a possibility this project would be pulled because of weather, and we worked with — Rogers Group is the contractor we were going to work with and I met with them right up until that Friday before and we looked at the long-range forecast and it was just not good for us.”
Paving will also occur around the same time frame for the Yacht Club and Sequoyah and Chota roads, Gagley said, adding Chota Road will only be from the Tellico Village Volunteer Fire Department station to the traffic light. For now Rogers Group only has a contract to work at the Yacht Club and Tanasi Golf Course.
“What we’ll do is either go back out to bid or award it to them, but we just haven’t authorized the work on Sequoyah Road or Chota (Road) yet,” Gagley said.
Estimated costs are $80,000 for the Yacht Club, $120,000 for Tanasi and $170,000 for Sequoyah and Chota roads. Gagley said the POA is looking at different techniques to reduce costs.
“We’re going to mill and pave Tanasi and mill and pave the Yacht Club,” Gagley said. “Now we’re looking at a couple different processes. Actually I just got back from Nashville yesterday meeting with ... Don Reid, he is the right-of-way manager for the public works department of Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County. He is big into pavement management, which is extending the lives of asphalts.”
Work entailed does not include pavement preservation, which will cost an estimated $135,000 for Chatuga this year in either August or September, Gagley said.
Substation frame
General contractor Garnet Electric Co., of Alabama, is working on erecting steel for a 40-megawatt substation just south of the intersection of Davis Ferry Road and Highway 444. Bill Watkins, Loudon Utilities Board electric system engineer, believes the project could be put online in June.
“We’re erecting steel right now, the steel framing of the substation, but we’re probably another — we’re about one quarter of the way along,” Watkins said. “... Once there’s setting the major equipment — the transformers, the breakers and the control room, but beyond that the real work begins when you start doing all of the control wiring in the substation. These are the nerves and they’re like the cardiovascular system and the nerve system, central nervous system, of the substation. All the wiring has to go out to every piece of operational equipment brought back to the control room and everything wired up with all their labels.”
Once completed, a company will come in to test the substation’s functionality, he said.
The new substation is projected to cover half of Tellico Village and some in the northeast corner of Loudon’s territory, Watkins said.
“This substation is going to take off at least half of the load, and that’s what their problem was with the ice storm (a couple years ago),” Gagley said. “Once the power went out and the temperatures got so cold they couldn’t bring up the system all at one time. ... This way that takes half that load off of it, at least half the load.”
