ALABAMA STATE EDITION
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72 Florence
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Huntsville
20 Decatur
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A Supplement to:
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Gadsden
78 59 Anniston
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Birmingham Bessemer
82 Tuscaloosa
65 280
20 82 Auburn
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Selma
Phenix City
Montgomery
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April 27 2016
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Vol. XXIX • No. 9
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“The Nation’s Best Read Construction Newspaper… Founded in 1957.”
Dothan
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Mobile
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Your Alabama Connection • Rich Olivier, Atlanta, GA • 1-800-409-1479
Construction in Full Bloom on Botanical Garden Center Envisioned to exude southern hospitality, the $13 million Huntsville Botanical Garden Guest Welcome Center is set to increase attendance and enhance the overall visitor experience when it opens in 2017. Located near Alabama’s renowned U.S. Space and Rocket Center, the 30,000-sq. ft. (2,787 sq m) building will include a great hall entrance, three event facilities, a larger gift shop and café, along with muchneeded storage and office space. “This project is not only going to change the garden, our members’ pride and volunteers’ spirit, but also our community,” said Melissa Riley, Huntsville Botanical Garden vice president of visitor experience. “How companies are able to recruit for quality of life, the ability to bring more conferences to the area, tourism for Huntsville and the state of Alabama, more support in ways no one can imagine for area retirees, outreach and education and our community’s ability to show how supportive they are in their investments will be greatly increased, due to this iconic project.” In January 2016, a groundbreaking ceremony was held for the new center, featuring members of the project team.
“Seeing this construction and knowing that it was brought on by the community, is not only encouraging, but also validating to all of the founders, volunteers and staff that put in so much hard work and effort,” said Riley. “We have found more and more energy from the welcomed excitement that
Huntsville Botanical Garden photo
Envisioned to exude southern hospitality, the $13 million Huntsville Botanical Garden Guest Welcome Center is set to increase attendance and enhance the overall visitor experience when it opens in 2017.
the project brings every time the story is told, backed immediately with ‘How can we be a part of it?’” With limited space and continued interest in the gardens, officials realized the time to build was now. “An understanding of the growth of the garden, the long needed expanded space to greet and meet the needs of the growing number of visitors and demand for higher volume venue space in the community has been received with generosity and enthusiasm,” said Riley “It will be a welcoming iconic match to the incredible oasis we simply refer to as ‘The Garden.’” Construction workers broke ground on the project at the beginning of the year. Thayer Phillips, Huntsville Botanical Garden site project manager, said one of the biggest challenges on the job Matheny Goldmon Architecture rendering involves the schedule. A rendering of the com“We’re working within a pleted Huntsville very aggressive timeline, in Botanical Garden Guest order to keep from disrupting Welcome Center. certain activities and events that will happen throughout the building process. As a nonprofit, we rely on certain fundraisers to keep our doors open, and our largest fundraiser of the year is an event call ‘Galaxy of Lights,’ an amazing display of lights, over two miles long that winds through the garden. It’s run almost completely by dedicated volunteers and has become a holiday tradition for people in the area. Because of this, we knew that we had to work around their schedule and keep certain goals and dates in order to keep from affecting the operation or their schedule. Other challenges have come from coordinating a temporary entrance road. “Our main entrance road is being rebuilt as a part of the project and needed to have traffic diverted until it’s finished,” said Phillips. “The Madison County public works team helped us to build the road, as well as a private contractor, but we had to build the road on our neighbors property, a public P-8 school, so getting the easements and having the road built to their spec and on our timeline was something that required a lot of time and effort in both the plansee GARDEN page 6