Battered and broken, Government Center is at the core of the real problem for city and council

A summer of flooding inside the Columbus Government Center has led to a season of big decisions and uncertainty for the city council, mayor and top administrators as they wrestle with the next move in dealing with the 47-year-old building and its multitude of infrastructure problems.

That was evident Tuesday night during a lengthy council meeting where an hour was devoted to plumbing, electrical and other issues facing those who maintain the 12-story downtown structure that houses a significant piece of city government and almost all of the county’s courts.

John House was elected to council this summer and as the newest councilor, the retired U.S. Army colonel brings a different perspective to the discussion. One of his final military stops was as the garrison commander of Camp Humphreys, south of Seoul, South Korea.

He heard the message and he’s new to the problem.

“We have a significant problem because it is clear we can’t ignore the current situation,” said House, who got his first full briefing on the building issue on Tuesday. “We have to do something to correct the problem, and the longer we wait the more we risk additional things going wrong.”

House points to the electrical load the building was built to handle in 1971 and what is required to power in today’s technological world.

“Think about the number of computers that were on people’s desks in 1971 versus today, you can see the electrical load is well beyond that first design,” House said. “We are going to have to do something and we are probably going to have to so something fairly drastic.”

House summed up the issue simply in terms anyone can understand.

“It’s a mess,” he said.

Not a new problem

It is indeed a mess that has led to considerable frustration for elected officials, administrators, employees and court officials. And it is not a new problem, only one that has been pushed into the center of the table because of three flooding incidents in the building since June 18. The first one, which dumped an estimated 36,000 gallons of water into the building, having it cascade from the top floor all the way down to the fourth floor, has closed the 11th and 10th floors. As the city awaits an insurance settlement from Travelers, four of the seven main courtrooms have been rendered unusable because of the flood damage.

Public Works Director Pat Biegler addressed the council on Tuesday and she was blunt and calculated in her remarks. She pointed out that when the Government Center opened, there was no certificate of occupancy, the seal of approval from city building inspectors that a structure is ready and safe to open. She also said that multiple construction projects have been done inside the Government Center before 2012 with city-required building permits.

On top of the work that will be needed to fix the damage caused by the flooding, Biegler says the building needs nearly $6 million in immediate repair work. That includes $2.5 million for drain line replacement; $800,000 for new air conditioner controls; $80,000 to change gate values to ball valves; $50,000 for cut-off valves on each floor; and $50,000 for lock replacements.

Also in that nearly $6 million estimate is $2.45 million needed in fire safety work, Biegler said. This includes $1 million for a new sprinkler system, $850,000 to pressurize the stairwells and $600,000 for a new fire alarm system.

“And that’s not everything that needs to be done,” Biegler said. “If we are going to replace the building down the road, we need to make a decision to invest and move forward with some of these projects.”

City Manager Isaiah Hugley echoes what Beigler said about the scope of the work she outlined.

“That is just getting the building in the short-term to the state we can have normal operations through the period of time it’s going to take to get us to the point we have the funding to either renovate or construct a new building,” Hugley said.

Council will eventually have to make a decision on that building, Biegler told the councilors.

Exploring options

Everyone knows that, and Mayor Teresa Tomlinson, who leaves office in early January after eight years, said it’s a “full-fledged dilemma.”

“There are other options,” she said. “And they all have political consequences and council is going to have to make some tough decisions. But I am sure it’s bothersome to a lot of folks at this table and many watching that there is even a proposal that $5.9 million be poured into a building that has to be fundamentally gutted and redone. And that to me — and I am sorry to be dramatic — is like burning it in a big trashcan or something because you are only putting that $6 million for a short time.”

Those options that Tomlinson mentioned by the Mayor’s New Government Center and Judicial Building Commission, which met for about a year before making a recommendation in December 2017.

The commission considered three possibilities:

▪ Renovating the existing tower and two wings at a cost of nearly $110 million.

▪ Demolishing the wings and renovating the tower as strictly a judicial building and adding an adjacent structure for city offices, estimated at more than $114 million. The costs do not include expenses for relocation and furniture.

▪ The preference was the option that would completely demolish the downtown Government Center complex and replace it with two new buildings — one for a judicial center and the other for city offices. That option would cost nearly $125 million, according to the estimates.

One of the suggestions that has been made is to renovate the building floor by floor, starting at the top.

“It seems like such a common-sense proposal,” Tomlinson said. “Let’s start at the 11th floor, gut it, completely redo it and put in new pipes, put in new fire systems, put in all new everything. What I keep hearing from the professionals is that cannot be done because the systems cannot support the new stuff.”

The discussion on what to do, and how to fund it, is being held at a time when the building is showing its age and causing great inconvenience for those who work in it and use it on a regular basis.

And there is also an ongoing insurance claim.

“This is a situation where we are dealing with an insurance claim,” Hugley said. “We are trying to bridge a gap between what adjusters are saying and what construction folks are saying. ... We are still working with adjusters and I can’t put a projected dollar amount yet. But you saw where we are. It’s that and growing.”

The city and adjusters have agreed on a partial settlement, City Inspections & Code Director John Hudgison told council. There was $271,215 in mechanical and electrical damage to floors 5-11 in the first incident, which was caused by a busted water main to one of building’s boiler. There was $34,071 in mechanical and electrical damage to floors 2-4 in the second incident.

Those claims do not include damage to contents and other claims, Hudgison said. He met last week with adjusters trying to reach a settlement, Hugley said.

The city’s insurance policy with Travelers expires at the end of June 2019.

“We will have to re-up for insurance,” Tomlinson said. “I don’t want to tell the insurers how to do their business. I don’t know, we have certainly paid a lot of premiums over the years and they should be glad to have our business. But they may reassess our risk. So then what?”

Councilor Judy Thomas, who was elected citywide, was clearly frustrated during the presentation Tuesday.

“I don’t want anybody to take this wrong,” Thomas said to Hugley and the city staff working on the building. “I think you folks are doing a hell of a job. You are doing what needs to be done and you are looking out for the citizens of Columbus and their money. But I don’t see any plan to hit all of those buttons. How are we going to do that? How are we going to make those decisions? How are we going to know that we need to replace that fire system and we need to do it right now and we can’t do it until we have replaced the entire building? Or we going to tear the building down?”

Hugley has been instructed by council to bring options back to the table as quickly as possible. And that’s what he said he will do, but that is complicated by the ongoing negotiations with Travelers, the city’s insurance carrier. The city has two claims submitted to Travelers for the flooding on June 18 and another busted pipe incident two weeks later.

Hugley said what the city is facing is more of a funding problem than anything else when it comes to the Government Center.

“You can do anything with money -- and money is what we don’t have,” Hugley said. “We don’t have the necessary funding source to immediately tackle all of the various systems that need attention. And even if we had the money immediately, it would take some time to get all of those systems to where they need to be. Therein, it’s a funding problem.”

Even if the city could put its hands on the $5.9 million for the immediate needs on top of the flood damage, it wouldn’t solve the problem, Hugley said.

“Those things would just buy us time — six to eight years,” he said. “It is not a permanent solution. It’s a Band-Aid. As Pat Biegler said, a decision has to be made. And that decision is to either gut this building and completely renovate it or tear it down and build a new structure.”

‘What are we going to do?’

And that decision has to be made by the council. But Tomlinson knows what she would like to see happen.

“It’s time to gut that building and start from scratch,” she said. “We can have the beams, certainly, but we need to take it back and put in all new electrical, all new plumbing and all new systems to bring it up to date.”

One of the funding options is a Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax in 2020, when the current 1-percent being collected by the Muscogee County School District expires. That tax would have to be approved by voters.

“That’s still two years away,” Tomlinson said. It would be November of 2020 and you wouldn’t start collecting until 2021. What are we going to do, board this building up and try cases in the Carmike theater building? We have a city to run. We have to thing short-term, yes. But what is the long-term solution?”

The major’s suggestion is to use the city Building Authority to issue bonds, borrow money, to being the design and construction process right away. The bond debt would be funded by existing funds that have been identified.

“We have had debt-service savings over the last several years,” Tomlinson said. “So, it would be using those debt-service savings to administer and pay for bonds as we go We have also been squirreling away money from previous savings on debt service and other things to hold in case there is a particular economic development opportunity that is held at council’s discretion separate and apart from the money we give the Development Authority. We can use that for the first couple of years.”

Whatever happens as council deals with the immediate and long-term needs, there will be a lot of public scrutiny.

“We have to make sure whatever we do is done with enough forethought and transparency to dispel that distrust,” Thomas said. “We have to make sure we do that.”

This story was originally published September 4, 2018 at 10:41 AM.