ABOVE: The Law Enforcement Center (LEC), also known as the Security Building, in Fairmont. The Martin County Board of Commissioners discussed the facility’s maintenance needs and the costs associated with them on Tuesday. Sentinel file photo.

FAIRMONT– The Martin County Board of Commissioners heard a review of the facility conditions assessment report for the Security Building/ Law Enforcement Center (LEC) at its meeting on Tuesday. According to Oleson & Hobbie Architects, it would cost $6.3 million to $7.2 million for all of the items to be addressed.

The facilities condition assessment of the 52-year-old facility was ordered soon after the board decided in March of last year to end its pursuit of a new Public Safety and Justice Center.

Tim Auringer of Oleson & Hobbie said, “In essence the building is good and sound and solid.”

However, he ticked off a number of issues including HVAC systems that are reaching their end of life and the roof system, which has been leaking and is also near the end of its life.

He said that while the building has been maintained well, there are areas where there’s mechanical breakdown.

“We looked at how to address portions of this in a way fashion where we can package this into several potential projects,” Auringer said. “Some of them can be pushed off to a later date. Some of them are a little more time sensitive.”

He said they identified $6.3 million to $7.2 million of work for all of the items to be addressed.

As the findings first went to the building committee, Auringer said that they asked for a possible project phasing schedule.

The first phase of work that they came up with was, Auringer said, the “low hanging fruit,” including reroofing, window replacement and security door access control.

Whenever reroofing is done, Auringer said there are rooftop air conditioning compressors that are also reaching the end of their life so they’re considering how to tackle both projects.

“The biggest challenge with this project is you have three levels of the building that are occupied and used. It’s your emergency center and it’s used 24 hours a day,” Auringer said.

He said a drastic and intrusive HVAC replacement project is going to be a challenge for the employees and that there would need to be a lot of coordination between all parties involved to get through the project.

With that said, the building committee had asked for the phasing to be updated in order to move up some of the HVAC work.

Mike Dolejs of Edi-Dolejs Consulting Engineers spoke more about some of the project. He stressed that the biggest components of the project are the HVAC system.

“Tim nicely stated that they’re kind of at their end of life, but much of these equipment that we’re working with was what was installed in this building when it was originally constructed,” Dolejs said.

He said the report as a whole outlines recommendations that are based on the long-term for the building.

“What do we want to do if we want to be here for 25 years?” Dolejs asked. “That’s different than what we would do if we’re going to be here just five years.”

Commissioner Billeye Rabbe asked some questions about replacing the air handling units and how it will disrupt the work place.

“It’s at least weeks of construction… I would be impressed if someone could come in in a month and get that done,” Dolejs said.

Building Maintenance Supervisor, Luke Cyphers, said that if one unit was done at a time one floor would be down for about 30 days without cooling.

Dolejs said there were some options, such as only replacing the condenser and compressor units, which would take less time than replacing the whole air handling units.

Rabbe pointed out that the board had originally set out to replace the roof, windows, possibly insulation and replace the condenser units on the roof.

“I think the urgency was those four things,” Rabbe said.

The board talked about areas of the project some more but ultimately took no action on the findings of the study. The board did set a work session to discuss it more at 1 p.m. on Tuesday, April 7.