BELLOWS FALLS — Recent repairs to the 100-year-old Rockingham Free Public Library have improved the environment for employees and patrons, but an architect has warned that, without an additional $1.9 million in repairs, the building will continue to deteriorate.
Ann DiBernardo says she couldn’t use her own town’s library because of mold and asbestos problems. “I got headaches when I came inside,” the Rockingham Selectboard member said.
“When I first came into the library, I couldn’t stay inside for long,” Library Director Celina Houlne explained. When offered the job, Houlne says she told the library’s Board of Trustees that “I would love to work there but that it wasn’t a healthy work environment and something would have to be done about it.”
With a number of patrons and staff reporting respiratory reactions in the library, Bellows Falls Village Trustees contracted with Todd Hobson from Claypoint Associates, an environmental consulting firm from Williston, to investigate the cause of this poor air quality.
A resulting evaluation revealed the worst problem to be mold and asbestos in the basement rooms, and the town addressed the problem both there and in the youth bathrooms.
After this work was completed in May, “I can come here down [to the basement] and I don’t start wheezing,” Houlne said with a smile. “We can start planning how to use this space.”
Further repairs recommended
But within the last year, Claypoint Associates has pointed out the need for ongoing solutions beyond a “Band-aid” approach.
The firm noted that water still infiltrates the building through the roof on the 1929 rear wing, through concrete block walls, and into settling aprons around the foundations. Without further repairs, the mold issue will return.
The library then sought financial help from Preservation Trust of Vermont, a Burlington-based nonprofit organization, which helped pay for a building assessment.
This assessment by architect Jeremy Coleman of J. Coleman and Company Architects, of Brattleboro, was completed in March 2009 with the help of a grant to match the PTOV’s support.
Town officials hope Coleman’s building assessment will serve to lay out the problems and issues, helping define the priorities and costs, as well as provide the framework for repairs and maintenance that will let the building last another hundred years.
“We are one of four Carnegie Libraries in Vermont, and one of only a few left in the country that is still in use as a library,” Houlne says [see companion story].
The Rockingham Selectboard, the Bellows Falls Village Trustees, and residents have so far stood behind the library’s need to catch up with immediate and long-standing maintenance needs. At Town Meeting in March, residents voted to allocate funds for the current fiscal year to fix the building.
But DiBernardo cautioned that the town has “a lot of difficult decisions to make, and I think at this time, taxpayers cannot support nearly $2 million for the renovation of the library.”
Coleman’s report suggested a new floor plan that would address some of the issues. He estimates the cost of renovations, repairs, and restructuring at $1,869,612.
Setting priorities
“One of the benefits of having the building assessment is that we can look at and evaluate what needs to be done – and when,” Project Director “Dutch” Walsh explained.
“The assessment has allowed us to prioritize the work … into categories, type of renovations and how those can be scheduled within the overall project,” Walsh added.
“In many cases, we cannot separate … systems and fix one at a time because some are interconnected and replacing or repairing the heating system, for instance, impacts the ventilation, which may impact the insulation [windows], etc.,” Walsh said.
“So, the first step to be undertaken is to categorize the work that needs to be done, decide what should be done at the same time, and what can be put off to a later date without impacting another part,” he added.
The report states that the costs associated with these changes are “estimates only,” Walsh emphasized.
“As with any conceptual plan, it needs to be taken to the next level of completeness in order to be sent out to bid, or to have accurate costs assigned. . . and as with any estimates, they are only good for a certain length of time — generally 30 to 90 days,” he said.
Library trustees must decide to approve the next phase — commissioning final drawings to be used in the bidding process.
“It is fairly obvious that any life-safety issues should be addressed first,” Walsh said. “The assessment does a fairly good job [of] identifying and prioritizing [that] work.”
In December, Library Trustees “have decided to postpone their request for funding for the Library renovations, and instead seek funds (at the March town meeting) to have the design plans drawn up,” Houlne said. ‘This way the plans can be used to get more exact figures for the cost of the project.”