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When Mayor Woody Collins found out Demopolis was not going to be served by the new West Alabama Highway, he was upset about it.

He voiced his concern to Tony Harris, Government Relations Manager, and others at the Alabama Department of Transportation one time. After that, he never spoke of it again.

While the highway will pass about five or six miles east of Demopolis, the city will serve as an important hub for the duration of the project as ALDOT announced Monday that it will be acquiring almost all of the former Piggly Wiggly shopping center and converting it into the West Alabama Highway Construction Headquarters.  The only retail space remaining will be the Marvin’s, which is still open. The remaining 40,000 square feet will be used by Brasfield & Gorie, the contractor for the project, and ALDOT.

At its peak, the highway will employ about 700 workers on this over 70-mile segment of road. It will include portions of U.S. 43 and Alabama 69, including the Linden bypass that is already under construction.

“The highway wasn’t going to come through downtown anyway, so we were going to have to find a way to get them off the highway anyway,” Collins said. “What we’ve got is a spin-off. This wonderful facility is going to be for Brasfield & Gorie and ALDOT. We’re going to have 140 people moving to this community for three, five or maybe seven years. So, we got the best end of this deal in my opinion.”

Trey Ogle, operations manager for the company, said there will be as many as 150 employees between the two entities that will be working at the facility. They will have offices, meeting rooms and an auditorium that will seat over 100 persons. And this will also be the home base for the hundreds of construction workers on this project.

The goal of opening this office space is to help expedite the construction of the highway.

“(The West Alabama Highway) is just actually a progressive design build,” Ogle said. “We’ve designed it into chunks. As we get the design ready, we’ll price that and then go to work on that while we continue designing the rest of it. The advantage of that is it allows construction to be done faster and to finish construction faster. Instead of waiting for the whole thing to be designed, you’re able to design it a segment at a time and then you can start on it as soon as the design is ready.”

State Sen. Bobby Singleton said not only was the highway a win for Marengo County, but also having the headquarters in Demopolis.

“I want to thank Gov. (Kay) Ivey for her vision and belief in this region,” Singleton said. “This is going to spur economic development. Will we win every time just because we have the highway? No, but we will be competitive. We will have some shiny objects that we can put in the game.

“This is going to give us in West Alabama the opportunity to grow our region, to be able to sell this region.”

Harris thanked the vision of Brasfield & Gorie for selecting this location as their field office for their role as contractor of the West Alabama Highway.

“This project represents bold leadership in finally keeping a promise of our four-lane highway between Mobile and Tuscaloosa with multiple points of connectivity to interstate highways,” Harris said. “The decision to place the field office in Demopolis makes sense. It provides a central location for the corridor. It repurposes available infrastructure. It’s just one more way the West Alabama Highway is already providing new benefits to the counties along this highway corridor.”

And after the highway is completed, Collins said Demopolis will have a renovated facility to offer.

“I don’t know what the state will do with it (when the highway is completed), but this is going to be a beautiful property,” Collins said. “You take a property like this and put several million dollars in it, you’ve got something. It’s going to be something.”