Canton to talk about fire station design

The Canton City Council Thursday night will again grapple with the design process for a new fire station to serve northwest Canton and adjacent areas of Cherokee County.

During a late February meeting, council members trying to decide between hiring an architect for the project or accepting an earlier low construction bidder and having an engineer review the specifications decided to hire an architect. That came after lengthy and contentious debate.

The city has now collected bids from several firms vying to design Fire Station 9 and manage the construction process. Mayor Gene Hobgood says architectural bids were sought because the earlier construction bid process was flawed due to a lack of necessary specifics, resulting in only two bids that differed greatly in cost.