$10.2 Million in City-County Building Upgrades Planned
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WHEELING -- The new Ohio County Building Commission convened for its first meeting Tuesday, just as $10.2 million in upgrades to the interior of the City-County Building are planned.
The project is being financed through revenue bonds, and the role of the three-member commission will be to facilitate the process of issuing the bonds and getting them sold to finance the project, explained bond counsel Carrie Cecil of the law firm of Frost Brown Todd.
Members are president Mike Traubert, vice president Elisabeth Slater and secretary Michael Caruso.
County Administrator Randy Russell briefed them on the scope of the upcoming project, which mostly involves replacing the entire heating, air conditioning and ventilation system within the City-County Building.
"It's now over 30 years old," he said. "I think we've band-aided and duct-taped enough that we need to do something different with it."
The existing boiler system and the chiller system on the roof will be scrapped and replaced with a water source heat pump system, according to Russell. The heat pumps will be placed in ceilings throughout the building, with each office having its own zoned heating and heat controls.
There also will be a lowering of ceilings - some of which are as high as 15 feet, he continued.
"That doesn't help with energy efficiency, so we're going to replace a lot of the ceilings," Russell continued. "We're going to replace the lighting with LED lighting.
"The objective is to reduce our energy consumption at the courthouse by 40%. Studies have shown we're probably going to do better than that."
The project is expected to take at least two years, and work could take longer based on supply chain issues, he said.
Slater said she remembers when she worked in the building 20 years ago some offices would be freezing while others were warm enough "to roast a turkey."
Russell said that was still the case. Sensors are located on the walls throughout the building that determine whether heat or air conditioning is needed. One area controlled by the sensor might get strong sunlight on one side, and this enacts the air conditioning. The other side of the building on the same sensor, meanwhile, is in the shade and not as warm but getting strong air conditioning.
The new system will give each office its own controls, and location in the building won't matter, Russell explained.
He said the plan is to put the project out to bid next week, and he hopes to have "at least two or three bidders."
The past two summers, the county has paid for a portable chiller on a tractor-trailer to sit in the alley behind the courthouse in the event the courthouse chiller might stop during a heat wave.
Caruso asked if maybe the county should consider constructing a new courthouse. The City-County Building was constructed in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Russell estimated the cost to construct a new courthouse facility at $45 million to $50 million.
"The (existing) building itself is structurally sound," he said. "We obviously need some repairs to the decorative items out there. The pavers that are out there are pretty well-pitted, and some of the column covers are coming up."
The building commission is expected to meet quarterly, but could convene more often in the coming weeks as the project begins, Russell told them.