The shell of Mathews County’s new 50’ x 80’ maintenance facility was in place and due for inspection Monday morning.

Located on the old Davis property adjacent to the Mathews High School’s baseball field and Port Fun, the building will have four bays for front entry and three for rear entry, with the back portion of the bay on one end to be completed as office, restroom, and storage space. Storage shelves will line the wall on the other end of the building, as well, said Mathews Grounds and Facilities Manager Tim Tillage. He said equipment and supplies for his department are currently located in various county buildings and it will be good to get everything in one place.

The board of supervisors had allocated $350,000 for construction of the facility, but Tillage said that the Hampton Roads Sanitation District, which services the county’s sanitary district, is requiring construction of a new pump station because the pump station located at Port Fun doesn’t have enough vacuum power to serve the new building.

Dewberry Associates of Richmond has been contracted to design a small in-ground pump station that will serve both the maintenance building and the restrooms at Port Fun, said Tillage. That design will have to be approved by HRSD before an estimate of the cost can be determined.

Because the sewage line serving the Port Fun restrooms was already due for replacement, said Tillage, there is money in the county’s capital improvement plan to help offset that cost, but the pump station itself and the line to serve the maintenance building will be an added cost. He said he is trying to do the project as economically as possible to cover as much of the cost of the pump station as he can with existing funds.