NATCHEZ &045; After months of negotiations, the federal government has awarded a $5.7 million contract for finishing construction of the Natchez federal courthouse.

The awarding of the contract to Witherington Construction Corp. of Mobile, Ala., was announced at Tuesday’s aldermen meeting.

Renovation of the historic Memorial Hall building on Pearl Street as a federal courthouse should start in October of this year and be complete by December 2006, City Attorney Walter Brown said Tuesday.

More specifically, the contractor will be given 480 days from the notice to proceed to complete the project, said Gary Mote, a spokesman for the U.S. General Services Administration.

A pre-construction meeting will be held soon, but a specific hasn’t been determined. A notice to proceed will then be issued.

The GSA’s deadline to receive proposals from contractors was in March.

Why the delay in awarding a contract?

There was actually no delay, Mote said &045; the agency was just carefully evaluating the submitted proposals to make sure they met the project specifications and were within the competitive bid range.

The latest estimate on what it would cost to finish the GSA portion of the project was $6 million, so the $5.7 million final bid &uot;is pretty close to that amount,&uot; City Engineer David Gardner said.

GSA contractors will work on the inside of the building, including walls, plumbing, air conditioning, electrical, duct work, security and elevators.

High-tech features of the new courthouse will include video displays to allow jurors and all other participants to review documents, DVDs, videos and graphics at the same time. Before, documents and other exhibits had to be passed from juror to juror, taking up valuable court time.

The facility will also provide up-to-date accommodations for jurors and witnesses and holding cells and interview rooms for defendants, as well as offices for U.S. marshals.

It will also provide for more secure flow of inmates, allowing U.S. marshals us to take them from a holding cell to the courtroom without ever entering a public hallway.

Local officials have lobbied to lure a federal courthouse to Natchez since 1999, when they successfully persuaded Congress to pass a bill allowing Judge David Bramlette to request federal funding.

Work on renovation of historic Memorial Hall on Pearl Street as a federal courthouse started in late November 2003 with the city’s part of the project.

That work, which was finished in summer 2004, included gutting the unusable parts of the building’s interior and removing old wiring and plumbing.

It also included installing a new roof and utility connections, restoring stucco and brick and structurally shoring up the building.

Once the project is completed, the Administrative Office of the Courts will maintain the building.