Work on the parking deck that will pave the way for construction of the new county justice center is under way, with early filling and grading almost completed.

According to Alan Bell, the architect of the deck and owner of Alan Bell Architect Inc. in Carrollton, delays in the time it took to demolish the Courtyard Square Building, the future site of the garage, have not pushed the project as a whole off course. Already, hundreds of pounds of dirt have been added to the ground nearest to Newnan Street in downtown Carrollton to level it with the street, and crews have been busy in recent days grading the rest of the property to ensure a sturdy foundation for the deck.

This in itself is no small task, Bell said, as the ground on the site is “just not very good.” The technical term for such soil, he said, is alluvial, or that composed of clay or silt or gravel carried by rushing streams and deposited where the stream slows down, making the ground less than ideal for large structures.

To combat this, crews from MWC Construction, the company that has the contract to build the deck, are in the process of drilling hollow piles deep into the dirt. The company will fill these piles with concrete before constructing the columns that will form the foundation of the garage.

Once the foundation is established, MWC will largely construct the garage from precast parts that will be shipped in from a manufacturing plant in Greenville, S.C. The plant, operated by Atlanta-based Metromont Corp., builds segments of the garage that are then fitted together like pieces of a puzzle. When it’s time, the segments will be shipped to Carrollton and formed into the garage by the contractor.

Metromont has already finished constructing approximately 60 percent of the precast parts, Bell said.

“I feel good about the project because the precast is being manufactured. There’s a lot being done off site that you can’t see,” Bell said. “Once we’ve got everything in place, they’ll put it together like Tinkerytoys.”

The city of Carrollton will have paid about $2.5 million for the deck by the time it’s finished, though the actual project costs are in excess of $3.4 million. Carroll County has agreed to pick up the tab for an additional 90 parking spaces in the deck, after the original number of spaces came in too low.

At 319 spaces and five levels, the parking deck will be significantly larger than the deck near the Carrollton Cultural Arts Center on Alabama Street.

In addition to designing the deck, Bell is also overseeing the design of a small park to be between the garage and Newnan Street. The design for the park is still up in the air, but Bell said he anticipates it to be roughly 100 feet by 200 feet and feature landscaping and benches.

Bell said he is still hopeful the deck will be completed by the end of the year, which will then allow crews to break ground on the justice center. Because the center will be located in place of the existing parking lot for the courthouse, the garage will be needed to house traffic while construction on the center is under way.