Borrowing needed for City Hall work
Broadway building awaits new roof, and tower repair must be completed
The city is considering borrowing $768,000 to replace the roof at City Hall and finish repairing the tower atop the Broadway building.
“We feel there’s an absolute need to replace the roof,” City Engineer Ralph Swenson told the Common Council’s Finance and Audit Committee on Wednesday. He said the roof is nearly 30 years old and suffered damage during the March 2 nor’easter. Emergency repairs were made, “but it is a temporary fix,” Swenson said.
Swenson said that, in addition to replacing the roof, the city should finish repairs to the City Hall tower.
The committee agreed and forwarded two resolutions to the full council for consideration. The council next meets on April 3.
In 2011, engineering firm C.T. Male Associates of Latham evaluated the roof and tower and recommended three phases of repair work, Swenson wrote in a
letter to Common Council President James Noble. He said the first phase of the work, done in 2012, included some repointing of the tower’s bricks and sealing of joints, as well as reroofing the tower.
“The tower gets a lot of moisture penetration from driving rain,” Swenson told the committee Wednesday. And once the tower gets soaked, he said, the moisture is pulled inside the structure.
Swenson said the city must finish repointing and sealing the tower to prevent further damage.
In his letter, Swenson said C.T. Male initially estimated the cost for the remaining
tower work to be $327,920. That was revised a year later to $375,175, he said.
Swenson said the city also received a $127,000 estimate in 2012 for the roof replacement.
During the Wednesday meeting, Swenson said previous councils decided not to take action on the repairs when the estimates first were received. He said there was thought to still be some life left in the membrane roof on City Hall.
Swenson said the roof is patched a few times each year but needs to be replaced. He also said several large sections of the roof were pulled up during the March 2 storm, which brought primarily rain to Kingston, and emergency work was done to pull the membrane back into place and patch it. If nothing else is done, more of the roof will blow off in the future, he said.
City Clerk Carly Winnie said the emergency repairs cost $7,000. She said an insurance claim has been filed, which could allow the city to recoup some of the expense.
City Hall was built between 1872 and 1875, and the tower was rebuilt after a 1927 fire. The city vacated the building in 1972 and relocated its offices to 1 Garraghan Drive in the Rondout district. The Broadway building later underwent a $7 million renovation that culminated with it reopening as City Hall in May 2000.
Swenson said the current roof was put on about 10 years before that renovation work so the building could dry out.