Goodgame, city, community thriving
Story by Paul South
Photos by staff and contributed
From structures where souls are nourished, to buildings helping first responders and physicians help and heal the body, Pell City is in the midst of a construction boom.
New police and fire stations, a new medical clinic and a new Sunday school building at the 123-year-old First Baptist Church of Pell City are only part of the story. The Goodgame Company construction trailers have popped up all over town.
Jason Goodgame, president of Goodgame Company, said the company, as well as the city, “has a lot going on.”
For example, Goodgame built a new state-of-the-art facility for the Pell City Police Department and as of mid-June, a new Pell City Fire Department Station was near completion.
“On top of that, we completed the addition to Pell City First Baptist Church. We’re in the process of adding on to Royal Foods following the fire damage, and we have a fire-protection project underway at Benjamin Moore,” Goodgame said. “We finished large expansions at Ford Meter Box, Allied Minerals, Douglas Rulmeca and Town and Country Ford in 2025. Those projects closed out a cycle where Goodgame Company, Inc. had the best three years in the company’s history.”
Ford Meter Box, headquartered in Wabash, Indiana, manufactures waterworks products and has done so since 1898. Allied Minerals purchased Riverside Refractories in 2017 and later expanded into a 300,000-square-foot footprint on Truss Ferry Road. Douglas Manufacturing joined forces with Rulmeca to provide conveyor components across North America.
Goodgame Company also built the new Pell City location of Helms Healthcare, bringing Dr. Ronald “Rock” Helms back to his hometown.
Goodgame put the mushrooming construction activity in perspective. “Just remember, construction is always in arrears, so when we sell a job and build out the job, it can be 12 months between our first meeting with a customer and when we break ground. Then, those projects are usually between eight and 12 months,” he said. “So you have to keep a healthy backlog, because you are always trying to churn the next job.”
While Goodgame Company’s backlog is not as strong as in years past, Goodgame said there is still a boom happening in Pell City.
“Absolutely,” Goodgame said. “There are other developments going on that we’re not involved in, and that shows the activity is broader than just our projects.”
Those new businesses include a development with Ulta and Hobby Lobby, as well as restaurants including Olive Garden, Outback Steakhouse and others. There is also a new dental practice and other space for retail opportunities to expand.
“There is a boom,” Goodgame said. “There’s no question. Pell City is growing, and people are seeing an opportunity to come here and do business, especially in retail, which has always been a difficult area for Pell City. Harbor Freight moving into an existing retail space is a good example. That kind of activity adds sales and ad valorem tax revenue, and the city’s leadership in promoting controlled, positive growth has helped get us to where we are.”
At First Baptist, growth decades in the making
There was a time, with two Sunday services and two Sunday schools, Dr. John Thweatt said, when his congregation felt like two churches.
The COVID-19 pandemic changed all that.
“It brought us back together and let us go back to one Sunday school between the two services. It didn’t feel like two churches anymore. It was one church. People could go to one Sunday school and choose which service they wanted to go to – the early traditional or later contemporary service,” he said.
He added, “It was so positive, I and the leadership decided that we needed to do whatever we could to keep it to one Sunday school.”
The answer? A new addition.
“At one time we looked at relocation, but it was out of our price range. It just didn’t work.”
The church opted to stay on the corner it called home. And it began to explore things it needed – an elevator in the sanctuary building, new restrooms and classroom spaces. The church settled on a connecting building between the sanctuary and the rest of campus. A welcome center with a covered entrance was also created.
“We put a cross out in front of the new building,” Thweatt said. “We just tell everybody to meet us at the cross.”
He added, “Now we can put smaller classes upstairs, older classes upstairs because of the elevator. It opened up a lot of different variety for us.”
The new building is just under 10,000 square feet. The total investment was just over $4 million.
But beyond square feet and dollars and cents, the church asked key questions. “Who are we not reaching? How are we not helping people? We’ve got people who can’t get around. We still have limitations in our sanctuary, but these are things we’re still trying to address so that we can minister to everybody in our community.”
The church is growing, getting back to pre-COVID numbers thanks to the one Sunday school, Thweatt said. Both worship services are full. New people are being reached and others baptized. That’s different from many Southern Baptist churches that have either plateaued or are declining in membership.
“It’s made us multigenerational again,” Thweatt said.
Thweatt has pastored First Baptist for a quarter century. What does the new addition mean to the life of the church?
“You’d have to see it, but when I walk out of my office, it goes right into the new welcome center and down the long hallway on the first floor,” Thweatt said. “I’m still in shock. It’s brought us back to something people are proud of. People say they love it.
“You see people talking and fellowshipping,” he added. “It’s brought us back together and prepared us so we can keep growing.”
Facilities to be proud of
Pell City Manager Tim Kurzejeski was preparing for an open house at the new 16,000-square-foot police department completed earlier this year. It includes command and emergency operations centers, evidence storage, a workout facility and other space to create what Kurzejeski called, “an all-encompassing police department” for the city.
“A state-of-the-art stand-alone police department,” he said. “It’s a workable space where different parts of the police department have their own working, usable area. As the police department grew, it was pretty tight quarters, and it was tough for those guys to do their job.”
The new department also includes cutting-edge technology.
“It’s going to make their job a lot easier,” Kurzejeski said. “They are able to process (crime) scenes and solve crimes more efficiently. That’s better for the public.”
A new fire station is under construction to replace the facility at the Civic Center. As with the police station, the fire department had outgrown the Civic Center space.
Kurzejeski served as the city’s fire chief before being named city manager.
“We are completing the project,” he said. “It’s about a two-to-three-year project from the concept to completion. (The Civic Center station) was the oldest fire station in the city, built in the early 1980s. Kind of like with the police department, with the growth of the city, the fire department had outgrown that space, with apparatus and assigned personnel.
“I feel like with the (police department) and the new fire station, these two projects are buildings that not only the departments can be proud of, but that the city as a whole can be proud of,” he said.
The new emergency services buildings are built for the long haul.
“What people need to understand is that with these two projects (police and fire stations), they were built and designed for long-term use,” Kurzejeski said. “You’re talking about a fire station they had been in nearly 50 years. We truly took our team and brainstormed and made sure these new buildings were going to be functional and efficient for a long time. Sixty years from now, this (new fire station) will still be the fire station. So, you’ve got to do it right.”
For Pell City’s firefighters, the new station is more than a workplace.
“They are there for 24 hours at a time,” Kurzejeski said. “It’s their home.”
A focus on quality of life
What does all this building mean for Pell City?
“These particular projects we see going on around our city, it just shows the growth that our city is seeing,” Kurzejeski said. “It also shows the main reasons people are coming to Pell City. There’s a focus on the quality of life.”
He added, “The First Baptist Church addition and the different projects that we’ve seen around I-20 with restaurants coming in – Pell City is one of the growing cities, and St. Clair County is one of the top five growing counties in the state. It’s because we offer a good quality of life. People see that there’s a cost benefit to investing in the city.”
Kurzejeski arrived in Pell City 30 years ago.
“I know how it’s changed since I got here in 1996,” he said. “It’s a great place to work, a great place to call home. We are really working – everyone at times doesn’t see it – but we’re going to manage our growth to be the most beneficial for the people who live here.”
