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By MICHELLE LOVE | Staff Writer

COLUMBIANA – Dunn Building Company held a special ribbon cutting ceremony on Sept. 24 to celebrate the opening of the company’s new equipment maintenance shop in Columbiana. Construction on the property began roughly four months ago, and members of the community and employees of Dunn gathered to celebrate the final product.

“Our equipment division, we handle the whole entire state of Alabama for Dunn Building Company,” said Derek Mason, the equipment manager for Dunn Building Company. “I rent it to our company internally, so everything has to come here to be serviced, maintenanced, cleaned all before it gets sent back out to a job. We opened this shop up to provide durability for our equipment and services.”

Chris Stricklin, president of Dunn University, emphasized the importance of the space to Dunn’s operations.

“All the company-owned equipment will cycle through Columbiana and bring people to our city here,” Stricklin said. “This is a new operation because in the past it was dispersed, and we collocated it for efficiency. Derek took over it and centered here to make it go smoother.”

Mason said he and his crew have an overall good feeling about the space, and are excited to get the ball rolling.

“We’re feeling good about it,” he said. “We feel really good that we finally have a spot that we can really get in there and service our equipment.”

“These three buildings were vacant with no plan when we bought them,” Stricklin said. “We also bought the property next door from a different seller, and we put it all together to make this lot. He now has enough real estate to get the volume of equipment through here that he needs to.”

After the ribbon cutting, Mason stood before the crowd of attendees and expressed his gratitude to all involved in the project.

“We appreciate the community of Columbiana letting us be a part of Columbiana,” he said.

“It’s bigger than us,  and it’s bigger than Dunn,” Stricklin said. “We focus on communities, not just what we do for our company. As a native Columbiana person, I’m really proud to have this part of Dunn in our city.”