Walmart will reinvest $6 million in a 12-week renovation and upgrade to its Andalusia store which begins this weekend, local manager Jared Lickteig told the Andalusia City Council Tuesday.

“This is a full-blown remodel that starts Sunday night, April 10, and will be completed by June 24,” Lickteig said. “The $6 million reinvestment includes all-new fixtures and the newest technologies.”

A similar renovation recently was completed in Troy, and is currently underway in Enterprise he said. The store will remain open throughout the renovation project, he said, although some areas of the store may be closed at time. 

The project will begin in the grocery section, where customers will soon see wider aisles. Increases in online grocery shopping means the company is installing new coolers and freezers for that process,  creating an easier traffic pattern for shopping those areas in-store, he said. 

The changes will give Walmart the capacity to increase the number of online grocery orders it can accommodate in a day from 280 to 595. 

“We’re averaging 150 orders a day, with 270 orders a day in peak times,” he said. 

The pet section will move to the current infant section, he said, and the store’s departments will shift accordingly. 

The local store broke the $100 million mark in total sales last year, he said, adding that sales increased 14 percent last year, and continue to increase this year. 

The local store also acts as a fulfillment center for Walmart.com, he said. As a result, the local store has increased inventory and additional products, he said. 

Andalusia this week moved a step closer to the new Heritage Park, which is planned for development at the intersection of South Cotton Street and Tisdale Street near the old depot. 

The City of Andalusia’s planning partners from Concordia unveiled their concept drawings to the Andalusia City Council in a meeting on Tuesday. Concordia, an architectural, planning and community engagement firm based in New Orleans, used surveys and town hall meetings in Andalusia to secure input from more than 400 area residents before designing the proposed park. 

“The participation and interest were great,” Steven Bingler told the council. “We think we’ve included all of the ideas in our planning.”

The resulting concept includes a plaza entryway featuring a fountain that can double as a small splash pad; an amphitheater; walking and biking paths; a pond; picnic pavilion; fitness stops and a carousel.

 Bingler said the fitness stops and the trails give the park a health component. 

“If we identify the trees we plant, the whole thing turns into an arboretum,” he said. “People don’t learn everything in the classroom.”

Mayor Earl Johnson said the park will make Andalusia even more attractive as a destination.

“These are the kinds of things we’re doing to make Andalusia a destination city,” Mayor Earl Johnson said. 

Concordia also has developed concepts that show the park hosting the parts of Candyland that currently occur at Springdale, with the idea of keeping the two sites – the Court Square and the park – closer together for visitors. 

Bingler said the next step is to work with CDG Engineering and Associates to develop an engineering plan for the water features and other aspects of the park. The park can be developed in phases, he said, adding that portions of it may qualify for grant funding. 

After reviewing the concepts, the council authorized city personnel to move forward with the next step in the planning.

The Tour of Honor, which benefits veterans’ charities, is bringing bikers to Andalusia, and specifically to the Covington Veterans Memorial, this spring. 

The event is a season-long, self-directed ride to memorials and monuments in the continental United States, Alaska and Hawaii. The event opened on April 1, and participants have an opportunity to win trophies by being among the first three to visit all memorials in a state. A director for each state chooses the memorial sites, which change each year. 

John Morton and Bert Williams of North Carolina were well on their way to claiming two of those trophies when they made a stop in Andalusia at mid-morning on Friday. 

The memorial sites for each state posted at 12 a.m. on Friday, April 1. The North Carolinians started just after midnight, and had visited memorials in Talladega, Fort Payne, Gadsden and Linden before arriving in Andalusia at about 10:30 a.m. Friday. They were headed to sites in Mobile and Dauphin Island in hopes of claiming the Alabama trophies this year. 

Morton and Williams, both sons of veterans, said the rides are a great way to support charities for veterans and first responders and to see the country. 

This year, the organization is supporting Fisher House Foundation, Gold Star Family Memorial Foundation, and Gary Sinise Foundation First Responders Outreach. 

For additional information, visit tourofhonor.com.

About the monument

The Covington County Veterans monument was dedicated on Veterans Day in 2004.

The stainless steel obelisk is an original construction by William Merrill and his assistant at Wilco Welding in Andalusia. The 5,000-pound obelisk took approximately four months to construct, and was moved from Merrill’s shop on South Cotton Street to the park area adjacent to Andalusia City Hall via a flatbed trailer, then lifted into place with a crane. 

The Andalusia City Council on Tuesday took steps to help the Andalusia Police Department recruit and retain officers. 

Chief Paul Hudson told the council he currently has eight openings for officers and one opening for a police sergeant. He proposed leaving four of those jobs unfilled for the next three budget years and using the monies budgeted for those jobs to provide pay increases for all current police department employees.

Chief Hudson said the move will put the pay for Andalusia police officers above competing law enforcement agencies in the county, and in line with what the City of Enterprise and City of Greenville are paying officers. 

The council agreed to amend the employee strength plan for the APD to grant the requests. 

The council also agreed to purchase two litter vacuums, to help address the continuing problem of litter. 

One of the units is a giant vacuum that sits on the back of a truck. The manufacturer, Madvac, says it is five times more efficient that manually picking up litter. The second unit is an all-terrain litter vacuum designed to easily address litter in parks, on sidewalks and in parking lots. 

The council agreed to use funds from the American Rescue Plan Act to purchase the units, which should be delivered in July.