Evans General Contractors, with offices in Savannah and three other cities, was recently awarded the contract to demolish and rebuild the Georgia Ports Authority Warehouse No. 3. 

About half of the massive 226,000 square-feet structure, also known as Ocean Terminal 3, which sits at the edge of the Savannah River, was destroyed by a three-alarm fire just after 11 a.m. on Saturday, February 8, when 1,800 tons of rubber contained inside the facility ignited, causing an estimated $20 million in damage. There were no injuries reported from the fire, which consumed approximately 110,000 square feet of the site. Officials said a firewall separating two halves of the terminal stopped the second half from being destroyed. To date, the cause of the fire has not been released.

“Demolition on the project started in July and we expect to have the whole project completed by January 2015,” said Jeff Jepson, executive vice president of Evans. Jepson is not related to Robert S. Jepson Jr., former chairman of the GPA. Jepson, who has been with Evans for the past three years, estimates the cost of the demolition/rebuild project to cost about $5.8 million. “We’re pretty much doing everything,” said Jepson. Jepson said the contract was awarded by a competitive bidding process.

In addition to its Savannah office on Park of Commerce Boulevard, Evans General Contractors also operates offices in Atlanta, Greenville, S.C., and a European office in Friedrichshafen, Germany.