With several big-ticket items looming on the radar, Allen Community College trustees pulled the trigger on a handful of major capital projects Tuesday.
The biggest — replacing the roof of the main Iola campus building — carries a $1.2 million price tag.
The aging roof has several leaks and other areas where water pools on the surface, noted Ryan Sigg, Allen’s director of physical plant operations.
The good news is the college has insurance settlement funding in the bank paid out due to hail storm damage years ago to pay for that project.
The bad news is the settlement funding will not be sufficient to pay for roofs on auxiliary buildings, College President Dr. Lyvier Leffler warned.
But that, and many other conversations, are for another day, as trustees turned their focus on more pressing matters, such as $124,000 worth of upgrades to the cooling towers used within the main campus building’s climate control system.
Installed in 2006, the towers have developed pin holes in their bases, and are prone to leaking, which prevents water from properly circulating to nearby chillers, explained Ryan Sigg, Allen’s director of plant operations.
Maintenance crews have done some repairs, but a better solution is to replace the damaged basins and other equipment.
With the upgrades, Sigg is optimistic the college can extend the life of the units, and the chillers, another 10 years.
That funding will come from the plant operations budget, Sigg said. Anticipating such a project, Sigg already had aside $125,000 for the cooling towers for this year.
THE PROJECTS are among the many deficiencies spelled out in a recent facilities review, which identified millions of dollars of needs across campus.
Sigg touched on another item within the HVAC system, the college’s two-pipe water circulation system, noting crews discovered a line failure earlier this month.
The failure was repaired in short order, but also served as a warning that failures elsewhere, if not noticed promptly, could be calamitous.
That should put the HVAC work higher on the college’s priorities list, Sigg said.
He has reached out to Architect 1, which authored the facilities study, to determine the most seamless solution.
“We’re hoping to come up with numbers of what it’s going to take to get this started,” Sigg said. “We have no idea if it’ll be a two-, three- or four-year project. We also don’t want to contaminate new equipment if we’re hashing it in as well.”
