Seneca approves contract for renovations to Kellett

At their meeting this week, the Seneca City Council gave Utilities Director Bob Faires authority to enter a contract with a construction company to convert a former school building into the new home of the city’s Light and Water Department.  The former Kellett School is being renovated for the utility department, explains Seneca Utilities Director Bob Faires. “There have been a lot of people that have gone to school there and hated to see the building just kind of laying waste over the years.  It was very much an integral part of a lot of people’s childhood in growing up and so we have taken this building now, we did a lot of work up front to see if it could work for being the home of the utility.  We are just taking the old building, it has got great bones, saved a lot of money from purchasing additional property for the utility and it just kind of had a real good fit for us.  Bringing that property and that building back to life has been exciting for our whole department and we are looking forward to the years to come in our new facility.” Once renovations are complete on the building, all Seneca Light and Water operations will move there, with the exception of the billing office, which will remain in its ground floor location at Seneca City Hall.  Faires is excited about bringing life back to the building.  “It is going to be a good project for us and for the city.  We are excited about it.  The folks that are used to seeing the old Kellett School alive where there is literally hundreds of kids and the place kind of a buzz, obviously, we are not going to have near that.  We are going to have 50 maybe at the most and so we are not going to have quit the presence that they had in the past but we are bringing the whole property back to life and giving it a new purpose, a real facelift and purpose that we are excited about it.  Being able to use a building like that, that has a history, a lot of people are excited about it.” Hogan Construction will serve as the contractor on the project.  This is a multi-million dollar project, for which Seneca is issuing a revenue bond.