The Ferriday Town Council called a special emergency meeting Tuesday, but not enough members showed up to hold the meeting.

The two members present, Gloria Lloyd and Johnnie Brown, along with Mayor Gene Allen, waited 30 minutes for a quorum. None of the other three council members showed.

The meeting was intended to address construction on the town’s community center, Allen said.

Work on transforming the old Piggly-Wiggly into a new community center has been delayed for months. The recent months have been peppered with special town meetings on the topic.

The project’s architect, Chris Williams, has recently said the town failed to pay its contractor, Arkel Constructors, Inc. Williams has said he has had to redesign the project plans three times.

At a recent town meeting, Allen suggested the architect and the contractor weren’t intending to continue with the project.

Work on the project was supposed to start in November, but was held because of structural integrity issues, Allen said at that meeting.

The emergency meeting was supposed to be about moving the project forward, Allen said Tuesday.

It’s not that the town didn’t pay the contractor, Allen said. The town is waiting on money from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, Allen said Tuesday.

One option might be for the town to pay HUD’s part of the funding — roughly $21,000 — and when the federal money comes through, HUD would reimburse the town, he said.