Flint Energies began work this week on a new $10 million facility in Warner Robins. It’s part of Flint’s plan to keep pace with customer growth in Houston County over the next 40 years.
The 30,000-square-foot building, which will take 18 months to complete, will be built on about eight acres where Carl Vinson Parkway intersects with Russell Parkway.
For the average customer, the finished product will mean better and more efficient service over the long haul, said Jimmy Autry, Flint’s senior vice president of member and community relations.
“We’ve staked a stake in the ground, I guess,” he said of the investment in Warner Robins.
The electric cooperative, headquartered in Reynolds, serves 17 Middle Georgia counties. But almost 75 percent of its customers are in Houston County.
Flint will close its outdated Elberta Road facility, while its building in Perry will remain open.
Flint has been planning and setting aside money for the project over the last six years. It also will sell neighboring tracts of land to help pay for the new building. Flint owns an additional 30 acres on the corner of Russell Parkway and Houston Lake Road.
“This land project is not only good for Flint and its members, but it allows us to ‘touch’ our market and be visible to the community as a whole,” Chief Executive Officer Bob Ray said in a statement.
While Flint has been saving money for the project over the last few years, it also has seen its own fuel costs shoot skyward – up $25 million from 2004 to 2005. Flint passed some of those expenses on to its customers through its highest-ever fuel cost surcharge in 2005.
But the electric cooperative decided to move forward with the building anyway, Autry said, not wanting to squander its savings on fuel expenses. The money would have lasted about a month if it were spent that way, he said.
“We think it was the right thing to do,” he said. “We think we made a good investment.”
A Warner Robins contractor, International City Builders, is constructing the two-story facility, which will house about 50 employees who will be relocated to the new building.
