Council votes, approves police station repairs

Avon City Council approved legislation on Aug. 12 for building upgrades to the Avon Police Department.

The ordinance will engage Clark & Post Architects, Inc. of Lorain, and Denk Associates of Euclid, to address problems with the building’s HVAC system and the building envelope.

An estimate places the cost at $381,500 for architectural and engineering services.

At an Aug. 5 work session, Ronald Cocco of Clark & Post outlined their plan to fix the problems which may have stemmed from a design in the 10-year-old building.

Cocco explained to Council that the attic, which contains mechanical equipment, is creating issues with air flow, and devised a solution to better insulate the space.

“What’s happening is that the air’s creating some pressurization issues as a result of that,” Cocco said.

“Our recommendation in sort of a simplified format is to take that attic space where the mechanical equipment is and to build a box around it. And the box will create a separate room environment within the attic space.”

A building envelope is the physical separator between the conditioned and unconditioned environment of a building including the resistance to air, water, heat, light, and noise transfer.

City Engineer Ryan Cummins noted on Aug. 5 that Council has debated the issue for some time in addressing problems with the building.

“This issue has been before you the past two years. There have been several times we have looked into how the HVAC system is operating inside the police system,” Cummins said. “Several people have looked at it. It’s pretty much universal that people recognize that the building envelope has issues. There were issues with how the insulation was performing inside the building and manifesting and how the HVAC system is working.

“We’ve had several people agree on the cause that looked at different ways to try to address them. We’re trying to get some clarity on the best way to address it.”

An estimate places the cost at $381,500 for architectural and engineering services.