Smyrna Council: No Extended Work Hours for Glock

Smyrna’s firearm manufacturing giant gets Jonquil City residents fired up.

It happened again at Monday’s Mayor and City Council meeting where Glock, Inc., again appeared on the agenda. This time, contractor JE Dunn Construction came before the mayor and council asking for extended work hours to pour the concrete foundation for Glock’s Building B, the first of four buildings as part of its planned expansion.

Last year, more than 100 people filled the council chambers to watch the council vote 7-0 to allow Glock to expand its assembly plant located on Highlands Parkway.

From that proposal, Glock has cleared out 18 acres of heavily wooded land on its property with plans to construct four new buildings on the land that is zoned Light Industrial. The Wetherbrooke subdivision lies just behind the Glock property and residents have complained that expansion poses environmental, safety and noise concerns.

Glock’s expansion plans reportedly call for adding 263,277 square feet of building space, which is about 2.6 times more than they have already. Building B itself is slated to be almost 90,000 square feet, calling for four pours that would be “unusually large’’ according to a representative from JE Dunn on Monday night.

With that in mind, the construction company sent letters to area residents and posted signs indicating its plans to begin work at 3:30 a.m. and working until as late as midnight on at least four different weekdays beginning next week. 

It would take approximately 58 concrete trucks to accomplish each pour and the early starting time was necessary according to JE Dunn representatives in order to get a “good finish.’’ It would have the trucks winding past residences along the narrow Camp Highland Road, where last month a truck overturned near a school bus stop.

The trucks would begin rolling through around 4 a.m. and would continue for about four-to-five hours. About a half-dozen residents spoke out against this plan and several commented that based on the council’s unanimous decision vote last year, that they suspected the council had already made up its mind to approve the extended hours.

“Why go through all the trouble,’’ said resident Steve Balyo. “This is all about money.’’

Added Kimberly Childs, “These are school nights. These are work nights. Being awaken at 3:30 in the morning is definitely going to affect my day. It’s going to affect my neighbor’s day. It will affect my kid’s day. There’s no noise buffer. They took all that down; 18 acres of trees gone. Some of that could’ve been a nice noise buffer, but there’s nothing.’’

, who is in an election runoff against for the Ward 7 council seat that represents the area in question, asked the council to “take into consideration the families, the small children that are going to school.’’

Another resident asked why the trucks had to access the property through the residential neighborhood rather than from Glock’s own entrance on Highlands Parkway. It was explained by the JE Dunn representative that because of a sharp turn and a four-foot rise, the Glock entrance was not “real friendly.” Following Environmental Protection Agency guidelines were also a factor.

“If hindsight was as good as foresight, we’d probably be saying this isn’t worth this,’’ said Councilman Ron Newcomb. “Somebody should’ve made a decision early on for Highlands Parkway to be the entrance.’’

It was pointed out by council members that extended hours had been granted for pouring jobs at Jonquil Plaza and for The Crossings at Four Corners. But as later remarked, those two pouring jobs did not have large trucks rolling through residential neighborhoods.

suggested possibly for the trucks to enter through the Glock security gate before the opening of business, thereby cutting the amount of residential traffic by concrete trucks in half (the trucks would still have to exit through the neighborhood). The contractor agreed that this would be possible and would discuss further with Glock officials, who were not present at the meeting.

After more than an hour of discussion, in which it was determined that the job could be done just as well with smaller pours (at more cost to Glock, but less inconvenience to residents), the council voted 4-2 to deny the request. Councilmen Lnenicka and Charles Pete Wood voted in favor, while was absent due to illness.

“It’s a convenience issue,’’ Newcomb said.

, who had earlier suggested that if it were him, he’d want to “get it done and get it over with,’’ expressed the final word on the matter after the vote.

“I think it’s a shame we’ve allowed late hours for other developments such as this and I think we’re just taking it out on Glock because there’s been so much controversy,’’ said the mayor, who earlier had commented that it was a “clean” construction site. “These are quality builders and they’ve probably done fifty times more than any other builder and construction on the site to make sure it’s right. And we just turned them down…I don’t think that’s right.’’