Forsyth County’s Department of Voter Registrations and Elections will soon have a new home.

Barbara Luth, director of the department, said she and her staff are excited after commissioners approved a $3.1 million bid to CBI General Contractors to construct the building beside the Forsyth County Tax Commissioner’s Office on Tribble Gap Road.

“It’s been a long time coming and it came in under budget, so that was good,” Luth said.

The department currently operates out of an office at the Forsyth County Administration Building and a warehouse off Piney Grove Road, which has voter registration cards and equipment. The new building will take over for both.

“It’s going to combine both our offices and our warehouse together in one building, and we’ll have an additional 5,000 square feet for expansion,” Luth said. “They’re going to be improving the parking lot over there for both us and the tax commissioner.

Luth said the department does a lot of travelling back and forth between the two.

Some voting will also take place in the new building.

“We will have advance voting going on and we will have training in that building,” she said. “We won’t have election day voting because we have so much to do on election day, but all of the advance voting we used to have in the foyer [of the administration building] we will have here.”

Luth said the building had been planned for three-four years and that she is happy to finally have the approval.

“We look forward to getting into the new building, and we thank commissioners for approving it,” she said. “It’s great.”