Warsaw City Hall has had some issues for a while, including leaking roofs.
At the Board of Public Works and Safety meeting on Friday, city engineer Aaron Ott said one of the main culprits for years has been what’s referred to as the rooftop plaza - the gathering space on the west side of City Hall above a portion of the first floor.
“So we’ve been working with Garland/DBS to do evaluations and do infiltration testings and really dig into what the root of the problems are to ensure that the solution that we’re going to come up with would be effective and take care of the problems that we’ve been frustrated with for some time now,” Ott said. “So, that’s what this project is.”
He said they’re talking about removing the entire deck - the terrace topping slab - and then removing the EIFS, which are the wall pieces, to the window level; putting in a waterproofing membrane and new water-resistive air barriers along the walls and down the whole floor, and then pouring back a new topping slab after it’s all been buttoned up.
“It gives us the opportunity not only to fix the leaking problems, but also make that a functional space that currently does not serve much purpose. But if you’ve not been up there, it’s a nice spot,” Ott said.
At the same time, he said they’ll be able to pour concrete that is more aesthetically pleasing and be able to set up “whatever we choose to set up there.” Ott said they could put some picnic tables up there or have some break spots. Once it’s cleaned up there, he said it probably could be used for a lot of different things.
“This will include fixing up the railings, buttoning up the space underneath it that has taken a lot of water damage and it’s a shed that certain organizations like to use to store stuff, but it keeps getting ruined due to the water damage. So this project will - it has a handful of things that are going to be fixed, but the main point of it was the roof leaks that we’re seeing coming in over the utility clerk’s area particularly and some of these bathrooms and such over here,” Ott explained.
He said they worked with Garland to come up with the scope of work. Garland is part of a cooperative purchasing organization where they’ve already locked in material purchasing prices.
“We were able to work directly with them as a turnkey to provide a fee for this, knowing that we’ve already got competitively bid prices that have been accepted by other government agencies, so it saves us the steps to utilize that purchasing tool, which we do for lots of different things around here,” Ott said.
The cost of the proposal to complete the improvements is $174,974. Ott said he’s worked with Mayor Jeff Grose’s office to put the funding in place to get the work completed.
The board approved the contract with Garland.