Architect answers more questions on courthouse renovation
Restoration Architect Jerry Berggren made the trip from his office in Lincoln Monday morning for a second sit-down meeting with the Hamilton County Board of Commissioners within a month. In the more than one hour-long session, Berggren again answered questions about work his firm had done at the courthouse in Wayne County. Commissioner Francis McDonald, who initially raised questions about the county’s agreement with Berggren’s firm following a visit to the northeast Nebraska community to inspect and take pictures of the facility, continued to pelt the architect with questions. Hamilton County had previously contracted with Berggren to evaluate its 150-year-old courthouse and possibly oversee a renovation and restoration project that would include tuckpointing the building’s brick and stone exterior and dealing with damage caused by aging and water infiltration over the years.
“I mentioned last time that the project was at a $2 million cap on it, which we held and I also mentioned that we discovered there were roof issues that needed to take precedence before the masonry work to be done,” Berggren began, in reviewing the Wayne County project. “So the cap was not raised.”
Berggren went on to say that the masons had estimated and recommended spending $1.3 million on the masonry work alone, so that part of the budget had to be cut by 66 percent.
“So we ended up doing only about a third of the amount of masonry restoration that we felt was necessary for the building,” Berggren said, “but anytime that you cut a budget by 66 percent, you have to make some really tough decisions. Some of the images that were presented last time were of stone that was left in place. We actually replaced 55 stones, but we could have replaced three or four times that amount of stones through the full budget.”
Berggren told commissioners that following his last meeting with the board on June 26, he had contacted the Wayne County Commission to get on its agenda for July 6. At that meeting Berggren said he had been able to work through the board’s concerns about the project to its satisfaction.
“We were all taken aback that none of us had been contacted by the county with this condition,” Berggren noted. “Basically, the masonry subcontractor took responsibility for this and is going to repair those joints at no cost to the county. And I think a lot of this goes to the fact that we pre-qualified vendors for this project. We wanted to get the best of the best to bid against one another.”
Several minutes of the meeting were spent with Berggren working through a 23-page printout of responses to questions raised about the Wayne County project at the previous meeting. The printout included several of the photos McDonald had brought to that meeting, supplemented with Berggren’s own photos of the same locations. He noted that some of the problems identified in the photos were the fault of the contractors and were being repaired under warranty, but he said other issues could be traced back to mistakes that were made when the building was constructed in 1899.
The conversation became contentious at one point when Berggren and McDonald disagreed over a mortar joint shown in one of the pictures as to whether it was original to the construction or was added later.
“I’m just using logic here,” McDonald said. “I think you’re blowing a little smoke. That’s my opinion.”
Berggren responded by saying, “Well, the analysis of the Wayne County Courthouse proved differently.”
The architect pointed out for the second meeting in a row that he regularly consults with British restoration expert Nigel Copsey on the old buildings he works on and offered more than once to set up a Zoom meeting between Copsey and the board.
In reference to the Hamilton County Courthouse, Berggren again said that a major part of the work here would involve putting in a grade-level drain to pull moisture away from the foundation and he also said “quite a few” of the building’s original stone building blocks will need to be replaced.
Near the end of the exchange, Berggren noted the importance of restoring and repairing old buildings the right way.
“People don’t know what they said when they say they don’t build them like they used to,” Berggren remarked. “Because they are systems that work together. We can’t live without air conditioning, but none of them were built with air conditioning. We can’t live without indoor plumbing. Many of them were built without indoor plumbing. You’ve got to understand the whole system before you start fixing parts of the system, so that you don’t build in those compound errors. Preservation is not easy and the reward for it is nobody saw what you did. If we do our job exactly right you can’t tell we were there.”
Chairman Rich Nelson brought the conversation to a conclusion by reminding the board of its original agreement with Berggren’s firm.
“We need to decide how to proceed,” he told the board.
Noting that he believed the board needed to do its “due diligence” by checking the company’s references, Commissioner John Thomas said once that was completed he suggested the board move on in negotiations with Berggren. Asked by Nelson if they agreed with that course of action, McDonald and Commissioner Nancy Salmon nodded in approval. (Board member Nichol SaBell was absent.)
Berggren thanked the board again for bringing the Wayne County situation to his attention, adding “We rely on our clients complaining to us.”
In other discussions by the board of commissioners Monday, the board tabled a discussion about the interlocal agreement with Merrick County to provide planning and zoning services. County Administrative Manager Scott Stuhr, who has been overseeing that office since the resignation of planning and zoning director Melissa Barry, said he has had only three applications for the position and has not yet conducted any interviews.