Letter to the publisher
Imagine that a homeowner is outside the city for several weeks and discovers a lick when returning. What would the homeowner do?
Option 1: Cover the roof immediately and call roofers to obtain offers for repairing or replacing the roof.
Option 2: Set an external architecture firm for hundreds of thousands of dollars to create preliminary reports on how to tear off part of the building and replace it with various architecture. Rent an engineering office and a tree management company that, when the physical work has ever been completed, will be instructed to replace the roofer as part of the project. In the meantime, the roof licks for several years.
Unfortunately, option 2 is what our city government has to do with the Thelma Boltin Center.
Misory of the city administrative cities of the Thelma Boltin Center – a case study in functional disorders:
At 8,000 m², the Thelma Boltin Center is about 3-4 times as large as a typical house.
The Thelma Boltin Center was actively used by the public until it was closed in March 2020 due to Covid-19. Instead of putting on a new roof that could cost less than $ 100,000, the city commissioned consultants to study partly or complete demolition and reconstruction options at an estimated costs of $ 6 to $ 8 million. Over the course of six years, hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent on consultants for reports and “options”, but no actual repairs were carried out.
Now the city has voted at a price of another 450,000 to 600,000 US dollars to completely tear down the building.
How much would repairs actually cost … without the bloated overhead:
Google AI review of the statistical data for the area of Gainesville, FL, estimates a new architectural shingle roof would cost 5 to 9 USD per square foot or 40,000 to 72,000 US dollars for the 8,000 square meter building. The exchange of Rotten Decking can add to this figure. My own experience of replacing the roof in my house confirms this cost range.
The city's current approach to maintain and repair the building makes it so expensive and time -consuming that routine editions such as a new roof are often neglected. External advisors are involved, with the price of the contractor doing the work. This may be necessary when building a large new building, but this approach is excessive for routine investments such as a new roof.
This approach leads to years that have been looking for problems that have not been related, while they do not have to do the necessary problems quickly.
The cycle is repeated in the whole city:
Citizens Field Area – Ne 8th Ave & Waldo Road
Just a few miles from the Boltin Center is the MLK multi-purpose center built in 2000 and Dwight H. Hunter Northeast Pool, built in the 1970s. These facilities are actively used, but are now being targeted on the demolition. The consultants have again informed the city that they would repair more than replace these buildings.
The proposed solution? Provide up to 85 million US dollars for new facilities.
While extensions can be justified, the demolition of a 25-year-old public building is wasteful and not sustainable. These decisions show a worrying trend – city buildings are treated as available, and millions are spent to pursue new buildings instead of maintaining what we already have.
Larger questions:
Is every city building in active operation essentially reconstructed every 25 years? Will the city spend hundreds of thousands of advisors in which millions of or even tens of millions of demolition and reconstruction are recommended every 25 years?
Possible solutions:
Ribbing the contract process:
Allow the city to hire the contractors who do the work and reduce the overhead costs of architecture, engineering and tree management companies.
Sell or indicate non -profit organizations historical real estate instead of tearing off:
The city should consider donating historical properties for non -profit organizations that may be better suited for maintaining such buildings with fewer overhead costs. In order to maintain bourgeois use, the real estate could be leased both to the city and the municipal groups, which gives non-profit owners an income current to maintain the buildings.
Proponents of the flexibility of the state building code:
Press clearer regulations that enable more renovation work under the building regulations after building the structure. This would reduce waste waste and promote timely repairs.
Diploma:
The current Gainesville process for maintaining public buildings is broken. The city spends more money on repairs than it would cost to easily do them. In the meantime, historical community goods such as the Thelma Boltin Center are lost – not until the time or nature, but to bureaucracy.
We can do it better. We have to.
Matthew Hurst, Gainesville
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