A small group is making a last-ditch effort to save the former elementary school and gym, saying a July vote by the Haines Borough Assembly to demolish the buildings was premature.
They believe an advertised project to remove the gym floor is the beginning of the end of the building.
“They’re tearing down a $2 million building in order to take out a floor…They can’t see a future for the old gym. They can’t see it as a recreation center. They can’t see it as a community center,” said Jack Wenner, a retired electrical engineer.
Joanne Waterman, a Haines Borough Assembly member who pushed for the demolition vote in July, said this week she didn’t see public support for keeping it.
“If there were user groups in the community that wanted it, there’d be more going on. The user groups went to (a February programming study meeting organized by the borough) and what happened to them?” Waterman said.
When the assembly decided last fall not to demolish the building, it put groups on notice that they had one year to come up with a plan for it, Waterman said.
“I’ve always been open to suggestions. I know there’s a need in the community. I don’t know this is the building for those needs, based on the speed that government moves,” she said.
Marnie Hartman, leader of a group that supported making the building a recreation center, said this week her Well and Fit coalition was waiting on a borough programming study for the building that was recently scratched.
“That was the plan. That was going to say what was going to go in the building and what it would be used for,” Hartman said. “We had multiple meetings with (the architects). We were intimately involved in that study.”
Hartman said Les Hostetler, a construction foreman who oversaw the new school project, convinced her that the old gym was worth keeping,
The borough is removing the gym floor under a January vote to remove “structural material” from the building, which Wenner questioned. “I consider that a stretch to call the floor a structural material. You stand on it.”
Wenner said an estimate that renovation of the building would cost $3.3 million is bloated. That estimate was drawn up by MRV Architects of Juneau in February 2010. The MRV estimate also said that in “very general terms,” the property could be renovated for roughly 40 percent of the cost of comparable new construction.
“I think (the $3.3 million) is high for several reasons. I want to take that $3 million and hack away at it,” Wenner said.
Expenses in the MRV estimate he believes are unnecessary at this time include $90,000 for foundations and superstructure, new windows in the classroom portion ($40,000), new finishes ($150,000) and smaller design features ($180,000).
Wenner slashed in half MRV’s estimates for items including an elevator, new lighting in the classrooms and gym and a new electrical service to arrive at his estimate of $1.44 million to reopen the building.
Also not included is $700,000 for “administration and management,” “construction contingency” and “design services” that Wenner characterized as “purely arbitrary numbers, just as arbitrary as mine.”
Former Haines Borough facilities director Brad Maynard said this week he thinks the $3.3 million figure was accurate for rebuilding the structure for the lifespan of a new building.
Maynard said he asked Dawson Construction to work up an estimate of the same project; then he penciled out his own estimate. “We were all pretty close. There was no big bust to anyone’s numbers.”
Maynard said it’s “not typical” to rebuild a structure to less than the lifespan of a new building. “Typically, you don’t say, ‘Well, we’re only going to use it five more years. Why don’t we just put one more coat of paint on it?”
Code for construction of public buildings requires use of new materials when a certain percentage of renovation is reached, Maynard said.
Wenner is working with Joe Poor, who envisions the building as a vocational training center. Wenner said he believes the borough offices should move into the building, as the current site at the old library isn’t big enough for borough records.
Wenner said the shuttered building has a good roof that doesn’t leak and is worth more than an empty lot, even if it’s only used as a warehouse. But he’s afraid he may be too late.
“They have the ball and they’re running with it. In a month we’ll have a completely different assembly. That’s what irks me,” Wenner said.
Assemblymen Steve Vick and Daymond Hoffman, who have been among the staunchest supporters of a new recreation center, this week characterized demolition of the old building as the first step to a new recreation or community center building.
Hoffman said he supports demolition “if this is what it takes to get us to that next step. And I’m going to be yelling, ‘What is the next step to keep us moving on (toward a recreation center)?’”
Vick said discussion of a recreation center stops when the old school gym is brought up, and the ensuing discussion “becomes fixated” instead on the old building.
“(Assemblyman) Jerry (Lapp) said, ‘Tear it down, and let’s build big.’ If that means we have to tear down a building to do it, I’m looking for progress on a community center any way we can get it,” Vick said.