Monroe council approves annex, rezone for Dycom project

By Jim Thompson – The Walton Tribune

The Monroe City Council has approved rezoning and annexation requests for nearly 50 acres at U.S. Highway 78 and Jim Daws Road that will allow construction of a training and retreat facility for Dycom Industries, a specialized telecommunications and utilities contracting company, to proceed. This site plan shows how the facility, which will include classroom, warehouse and lodging space, will be arranged.City of Monroe. Credit: The City of Monroe

The Monroe City Council has unanimously approved annexation and rezoning requests for nearly 50 acres at Jim Daws Road and U.S. Highway that will further facilitate the establishment of a massive training and retreat facility for Dycom Industries, a Florida-headquartered company that provides specialized contracting services nationwide for telecommunications enterprises and utility providers.

The facility, already under construction following an April groundbreaking, represents a $30 million investment for Dycom, and can provide training for as many as 2,500 of the company’s personnel annually, according to Andrea Gray, the Monroe attorney who represented the company at the city council’s Sept. 8 meeting.

When completed, the facility, with room for further expansion, will include a classroom building and administrative office space comprising more than 17,000 square feet, a utility pole yard, a driving course, an underground utility field, a mock residential neighborhood to provide real-world scenario training, and a warehouse for storage of supplies and equipment.

Overall, the tract will comprise approximately 40,000 square feet of training space, along with lodging for more than 43 trainees spread across four buildings totaling nearly 36,000 square feet. An existing 1,800-square-foot residence on the site will be retained as quarters for the facility manager, the council learned.

The facility, located across Jim Daws Road from the 200,000-square-foot Minerva Beauty salon, spa and barber equipment showroom and warehouse, and to property owned by the Development Authority of Walton County for future industrial development, is projected to be operational sometime in the spring of next year, according to Gray and to documentation provided to the city council.

The property had been rezoned by Walton County last year, and approved for septic waste disposal, but subsequent consideration led the company to opt instead for sewer service. That decision required that the acreage be annexed into the city and rezoned from its county-based business designation to the city’s Planned Professional District classification.

To keep construction of the facility on track, the city and the county are implementing an intergovernmental agreement that will allow the county to issue permits for the facility all the way through to the issuance of a certificate of occupancy. At that point, jurisdiction will be turned over to the city, due to the unanimous Sept. 8 votes in favor of the annexation and rezoning.

Thus far at the site, grading work has been completed, roads have been cut, utilities installation is underway, and concrete building foundations are set to be poured, Gray told the council.

Prior to the vote, Gray called Dycom Industries “an incredible generator of jobs.”

Locally, Gray added, the facility, which doesn’t have on-site food preparation capabilities, is projected to provide $4Monroe council approves annex, rezone for Dycom project

50,000 in annual business to local caterers.

The annexation and rezoning requests generated almost no council discussion prior to the unanimous vote in favor of both actions. The one exception was a question from Councilman Greg Thompson regarding a report from the city’s planning staff noting that the project’s low-intensity use “does not maximize the efficient use of its 43 acres,” creating a staff concern “that the project may be too small and inefficient to justify the requested infrastructure extension.”

Brad Callender, the city’s planning and zoning director, shrugged off that concern, while reminding Thompson that plan was approved by the county government, with limited input from the city.