The city of Fulton is throwing a party and hoping everyone will show up.
After all, city residents spent $7 million to build seven useful buildings at the city's new warehouse complex, and they should see what they paid for.
"The basic build was in 2015, and we moved in in January," said William R. Johnson, director of administration, who has been with the city more than two decades. "This is our first chance to show it off, so we're unveiling it for our citizens."
Fulton city workers invite everyone to tour the facility at 1303 Westminster Ave. (take the road just south of the sign and drive back, following the right-hand curve). The tour will be 3:30-6 p.m. Tuesday with light refreshments, followed by the City Council's regular monthly meeting at City Hall, beginning at 6:30 p.m. A ribbon cutting will be held at 4:30 p.m.
Johnson said city officials like to plan projects then pay them off quickly.
"We consciously try to spread out large-scale projects over time," he said.
City Hall was built about 2001; it's paid off. A new fire station at 151 W. Tennyson Road was built in 2011, and the next year the Police Department moved into a converted building. This new warehouse complex, Johnson said, will be paid off in 10 years.
"It's been talked about for decades," he said. "The old facility was a converted fire brick plant built in the 1880s. The city acquired the old city warehouse about 1960, and it was a deficient location for a long, long time."
It will be the site of the city's surplus auction at 10 a.m. Saturday, located at 1024 Westminster Ave.
The new complex offers public parking in front of the administration building, which includes worker bee departments such as utilities, streets, traffic, building and grounds, parks and recreation, maintenance, purchasing and cemetery.
"This is the place that gets it done," Johnson said, adding most services the public needs are still downtown at City Hall. "Very few citizens will need to come here."
The complex also has a service garage for repairs.
"The old one held three vehicles on a good day," Johnson said. "This one has seven bays, plus a separate wash bay with a pressure washer. We can work on about everything - trucks, tractors, mowers, equipment."
City workers are being certified to work on emergency vehicles, Mayor Leroy Benton said.
The complex is full of security with 30 cameras plus recorders on site. Two buildings sit outside the secure area - the solid waste building and the call-out building, which has equipment for emergency repairs.
"The reason for that is the solid waste guys might show up at 3 a.m. and start running routes," Johnson said. "And the service trucks, so if your electricity goes out at 3 a.m. they can get out and fix things without having to go into the secure area."
The new complex has about double the space as the former warehouse.
"And it's way more efficient," Johnson said. "We have different departments that can share a lot of equipment, and all the employees right here, so it makes things easy and efficient as well."
City officials are also starting to look at building a community center and reconstructing the wastewater treatment plant, a project estimated to cost $12 or $13 million. Public input will be sought regarding the community center, Johnson and Benton agreed.
"The citizens will define that," Benton said. "We don't have anything designed yet."
The new warehouse complex was designed by city employees and architects from Architects Alliance of Jefferson City. The contractor was Curtiss Manes Schulte of Eldon, Missouri.
"We were very fortunate to get the contractor we had," Johnson said. "Kevin Messerli was on-site manager. I refer to him as the bulldog - he got things done right, and he got things done on time."