Work on Decatur County’s new agricultural office building is quickly progressing, with interior walls being put up and the installation of a roof soon to follow.

Decatur County Prison inmates with carpentry and construction experience were working hard last Friday, putting up the interior walls inside the 9,724-square-foot building under construction near the Cloud Agricultural Building off Vada Road.

The interior walls are made of structural insulated panels from SIPS Team USA, a local company which operates out of the county’s Industrial Air Park. The panels are certified green products and will help the county government realize significant energy savings, said Ron Harrigan, president of SIPS Team USA. The panels are also built to withstand high-speed winds, he said.

County Administrator Tom Patton has said the insulated panels’ benefits are particularly important because the county government will be leasing out part of the new building to the federal government, which has U.S. Department of Agriculture’s local Farm Service Agency (FSA) and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) offices in Bainbridge. When the building is finished sometime in February, it will also become the new home of the county’s Cooperative Extension office and its 4-H program.

The exterior of the building will be made of metal and stone, with its facade matching the look of the Cloud Agricultural Building. In addition, there will be a covered entryway out front, which will help parents dropping off their children at the 4-H program.

Other local contractors working on the new ag building include McMillan Construction of Bainbridge, which won the bid to install the building’s concrete foundation; and Billy Dollar Construction of Bainbridge, which is providing general contractor services for the project.

A new street was paved to provide access from existing roads to the new ag building; it will be known as “Ag Lane.”