After their second extended discussion within a month on how to get Allen Community College’s facilities up to date, ACC agreed on one thing Tuesday.
There’s still too much they don’t know.
“I’m struggling with this whole big picture,” Trustee Corey Schinstock said. “I’m trying to get it in my mind that this is what we need to do in year one. And then staggering everything out over whatever that period is.”
Tuesday’s special meeting focused primarily on a facilities study authored by Architect One this summer, pointing to millions of dollars of needed upgrades for Allen’s main campus building.
The centerpiece is the structure’s 55-year-old HVAC system, which is due for new piping, and carries a projected price tag of at least $8 million, and probably more.
But replacing that system is only one of several needs highlighted by Architect One, including extensive upgrades to the Horton and Winter Halls, the college’s two oldest student dorms. Those prescribed remedies are so expensive, trustees are instead looking to build anew.
“This information is good,” Schinstock said. “It points out our deficiencies and what we need to fix. But now, give us a plan to prioritize what we’ve got.”
Trustees agreed with plant operations director Ryan Sigg that engineers will be needed to map out a strategy.
“This is going to be something that might take six to eight months just to plan out or longer, maybe even a year,” Sigg told the Trustees. “I feel bad for saying I don’t know, but I truthfully don’t know. There’s going to be a lot of questions.”
How the upgrades are timed is one of the biggest keys, with major projects likely limited to the summer, when the spring or winter semesters are not in session.
On top of that, trustees are grappling with a space allocation study that provided several options to free up office and classroom space within the existing footprint, or if the college was up to it, building onto the main campus building.
But carrying those projects out to fruition also carries a potential price tag of up to $13 million.
Sigg and his maintenance crews have already tackled several of the “low hanging fruit” items tagged in the facilities study.
But the big-ticket projects — especially HVAC systems — will almost certainly require an engineer to map out a strategy, Sigg noted, particularly if the work is phased in over several years.
But even that carries a risk, because the piping system — with a projected life span of 40 to 50 years — is 55 years old already.
Phasing in a replacement could stretch that to 60 years, “and that’s if we started fairly quickly,” Sigg said.
