It wasn’t expected to cost anywhere near $700,000, but an ongoing project to makeover the front entrance of Dorval city hall faced unforeseen structural issues that required spending additional funds for unprecedented repairs.
Last week, council approved a few modest payments to complete the city hall façade project, including $23,000 to supply stones to cover the new front entrance staircases, that is expected to be completed this summer. This stone placement is part of major renovations to the main access to city hall which began last April 2013 as part of a plan to modernize the facade and deal with water infiltration problems. However, initial cost projections soared after it was determined extensive foundation support work was required to prevent the sagging of the main structure.
The city hall building is a converted filtration plant and is resting on old underground water basins that were showing signs of severe degradation. This led to about $500,000 being spent to stabilize and reinforce the structure, Mayor Edgar Rouleau said.
“The old water basins and aging pylons, there was nothing left. City hall would have collapsed,” he said. “So we had to stop everything.”
About 60 steel supports had to be installed to stabilize the building and then new permanent concrete columns were installed last fall, the mayor said.
“This was to make sure no damage to the building would occur,” he said, adding the building dates back about 100 years, when it was built as a water filtration plant and then became used for city hall purposes about 50 years ago once the current filtration plant on Lilas Ave. was built.
While this stabilization work could have been designated as emergency repairs, the city opted to call for a public tender considering the attention being directed to municipal contracts and construction projects.
“I wasn’t going to sign $500,000 to fix city hall without going to tender,” Rouleau said, adding the structural support work has brought the total cost of the city hall renovation project up to $720,000 from the initial $100,000 range.
“We’re doing more than we would have done (if the support work wasn’t an issue). The water basin goes up to the street. We had to check if that had to be removed. If that would have had to be removed, it would have cost another $100,000, but the engineers said you can keep it. We just reinforced everything and re-did some concrete,” he added.
Rouleau said the renovation project is taking longer to complete than anticipated because of the extra work and the number of contracts being processed.
“From a project of about $100,000 to dig and put some water drains to what we had to do is completely a different project,” the mayor said. “We thought that would have done it, but after we discovered that the foundation, the concrete column had degraded so much that they were not holding any more. That’s when we had to review the whole project.” In October 2012, the city had approved several contracts regarding the city hall façade which totalled about $70,000.
These initial contracts included about $25,000 for the repointing of bricks on the façade, $16,000 to repair the water basins, about $15,000 to prepare architectural sketches and specifications, as well as $19,000 for a management firm to oversee the project.
Since then, the city has several times approved additional funds and works for the basin repair/façade project, from a $36,000 contract awarded in July 2013 for steel structures, five contracts in August 2013 totalling about $165,000, to this past February approving a $23,000 payment for plumbing work.
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