Heather Young/Atascadero News

The historic City Administration Building is expected to reopen to the public in 2013, 10 years after it was red-tagged from extensive earthquake damage.

Although the building has been empty since the San Simeon Earthquake damaged it in December 2003, it has not been forgotten.

Since that time, city staff has been working with Pfeiffer Partners Architects, Inc. to assess the damage, work with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to get funding and create construction documents for the work.

Finally, work on the FEMA-funded projects is nearing a start.

Work will begin this fall on Phase I of the three-phase construction project. Phase I is being called the demolition phase, which means that all the hazardous materials will be removed before the next phase begins. Phase II will include the elements that FEMA will cover under mitigation and repair. Phase III will include the work that FEMA will not pay for, such as getting the building up to code and other interior elements to get the building ready to be occupied by the city.

After many meetings with FEMA and two appeals, the funding is set, the construction documents complete and the city is moving forward to get bids on the first two phases, which both include FEMA funding.

“We’ve got all the drawings done for all the FEMA work,” Pfeiffer Partners Principal Stephanie Kingsnorth said.

Kingsnorth said Pfeiffer Partners is now working on the drawings for Phase III, which will get the building up to code and ready to be occupied by the city. She said she received approval from the city council on June 22 to begin the Phase III drawings. She began those drawings on July 1 and said she expects them to be completed by the end of October.

On Tuesday, July 27, city staff will present an update on the current project, including what the city’s construction management firm, Bernards, is working on in regard to bidding out the project, refining the budget, the construction schedule and more.

“Where we stand today, we’re trying to get to a point we can go to the city council and have the construction management firm recommend we bid out the [project],” Atascadero Public Works Director Russ Thompson said. “Those plans are done — just the final touches [are needed] to get them ready to go out to bid.”

Thompson said that Bernards recently occupied the vacant temporary building on Lewis Avenue next to the Atascadero Historical Society and has three staff members on-site. Bernards will remain involved in the project, managing it for the city, until completion in June 2013.

Additionally, it is the goal of both Bernards and the city to employ local contractors as much as possible, Thompson said.

“[We’re] trying to keep as much of that money in town as possible,” Thompson said. “There are so many specialty aspects of this project — it will be a challenge.”

One thing Thompson said city staff and Bernards will be asking the city is to bid the project as a multiple-prime project, which is when the work is broken up into smaller sub-areas. That would be instead of hiring one contractor to do everything and hire subcontractors.

Thompson said bidding it as a multiple prime would save money because Bernards would act as the contractor, manager the sub-contractors and oversee the entire project.

“By doing multiple prime, you’re getting rid of the middle man,” Thompson said. “It has the potential to save a significant amount of money.”

Thompson said it is hoped that Phase I, the demolition phase, will go out to bid in early August with bids back in September and work starting in the fall.

While Thompson said FEMA has been a stumbling block as the city goes back and forth with the agency, he said that the latest holdup in getting work started on the building has been getting the draft HAZMAT survey back from Millennium, the firm that went through the building and identified all the hazardous materials, which includes pigeon guano, lead paint, mold and asbestos.

“The good thing is there were no surprises,” Thompson said and added that Pfeiffer Partners had identified all those items as hazardous materials when they were looking at the architecture.

“This was probably the key final ingredient so we could get to a point where we could go and do the demo,” Thompson said.

For the public, Bernards has set up a webpage through the city’s website. Go to www.atas

cadero.org and click on the left-hand side of the page that says, “Historic City Hall Project.” That will go to a page with information and photos on the project. As the project gets under way, video will be available on the page. There are also links to all the documents related to the project and Bernards’ and Pfeiffer’s websites.

Kingsnorth said the building should be completed by June 2013, in time for Atascadero’s centennial.

“We’re trying to coincide with centennial,” Kingsnorth said. “We think it would be a fabulous thing to be able to open the building [during the centennial celebration].”



Funding

Currently, Atascadero Administrative Services Director Rachelle Rickard said she estimates that the building will cost just under $43 million to repair and reopen as city hall. FEMA has estimated that its portion — including the 25 percent to be paid for by the Cal Emergency Management Agency — will be $16 million. Rickard said the city will receive $2 million from the California Cultural Historical Endowment fund, leaving the city with about $13 million to pay for.

Rickard said that when adding up the numbers, the funding comes up $12 million short of the estimate for the total amount. She said that is because the city has a different number for how much the repairs could cost than FEMA.

“Everything in the repair category, they have to pay for,” Rickard said. “Our estimate is considerably higher than theirs.”

After two appeals — FEMA caps the number of appeals at two — the city has been denied repair status for the building’s mechanical system, the settlement of the foundation and structural repairs.

Kingsnorth said FEMA will fund the structural repairs and settlement of the foundation as hazardous mitigation, but will not fund the repair of the mechanical system at all. Rickard said that if the city were able to prove that all the heating/cooling systems in the building were damaged as a direct result of the earthquake, she said they could possibly get funding from FEMA, but that could not happen until work begins on the building.

FEMA has two categories of funding for the building; the first is repair, of which FEMA will pay for the entire cost of repairing the item, regardless of the cost. The second is hazardous mitigation, in which FEMA sets a dollar amount that it will pay. If the cost of something in the mitigation category costs more than the set dollar amount, the city is responsible for paying that additional amount.

“You want to have as much as possible in repair,” Kingsnorth said.

While FEMA has categorized the structural repairs as mitigation, both Kingsnorth and Rickard have said that it should be categorized as repair.

“[FEMA] basically said, “Put the [unreinforced masonry] back,” Kingsnorth sad. “We’re in California; it’s not allowed.”

While FEMA will pay to get the building back to how it was on the day of the earthquake, the agency will not pay for code upgrades. While the city will pay for the other upgrades to the building, Kingsnorth said putting the walls back to the way it was on the day of the earthquake is against state law.

“We can’t go back and put in unreinforced masonry,” Kingsnorth said.

For the building’s settlement of the foundation, Kingsnorth said that the current plan is to use the mitigation fund to get the building stabilized, but that it will remain a little out of balance.

“The building will be completely safe, completely stabilized and seismically upgraded,” Kingsnorth said. “Almost every building is a little out of plum; it’s not unsafe. [The building is] sturdy, robust and will only get better through the course of this project.”



Traffic

During construction, East Mall between Palma and Lewis avenues will be closed to nonconstruction traffic. Palma will have one-way traffic from East Mall to West Mall.

The RTA bus stop on East Mall will be relocated, but Thompson said he is not sure where that will be as there are about 20 cars that park in the city’s lot on East Mall to take the bus.

“We’re worried about relocating the 20 [cars] downtown because that’s 20 parking spots in the downtown that get eaten up,” Thompson said.

At this time, Thompson does not expect Wednesday’s farmers’ market to be impacted.