The Depression-era building is set to reopen by the end of February.
MECHANIC FALLS – A worker plunged his hand into the just-exposed beam, the one that holds up the rear wall of the aged town Hall, and pulled out a wad of rotten pulp.
Town Manager Dana Lee reeled.
He imagined the costs of the $700,000 renovation spiraling out of control, the town spending money on steel superstructures, anything to keep the three-story building standing.
“It was the thing I feared,” Lee said. “I saw the guy pulling out handfuls of this stuff. I was about to have a coronary.”
Then, the rot stopped.
The massive beam had deteriorated only along 5 feet of its 80-foot length. For about $1,000 in time and materials, workers for contractor H.E. Callahan of Auburn managed to install custom supports to bear the weight. Work on the supports was completed Tuesday.
The project is scheduled to be done at the end of February.
The renovation of the 75-year-old Town Hall has cost more than expected, depleting about three-fourths of the $40,000 contingency created to pay for unforeseen problems.
However, Lee says he is happy with that. The fund was created to handle problems that always come when working on an old building. In fact, most projects of this size would have a much higher contingency, he said.
Lee is doing what he can to keep costs down, he said. People are sacrificing comforts to do the work more cheaply.
One example is the police department, which has continued to operate in its old offices even as the rest of the building has been a construction site. Original plans called for police to move into a modular building during the work, just as municipal workers did.
However, that would have cost the town about $16,000, money it hoped to save. Police agreed to stay put on the second floor.
“They’ve put up with a lot of unpleasant conditions,” Lee said. The noise of hammers and loud machines has gone on almost non-stop since the project began in late May.
However, as the work goes on, the police will be the first to move into their new home. In early January, their space on the third floor ought to be complete. They will move upstairs. Then, the second floor work will be completed.
In all, the project is scheduled to be done on time, though there is little time left for further delays. The project was delayed for more than two weeks when problems arose in the planned elevator shaft. Sandy soil there made it difficult for workers to dig the needed 4-foot hole.
The remaining work should be fairly smooth, Lee said. There are no more sections of the building to be examined. The major pieces of the work, including the installation of heating and plumbing systems and the elevator shaft construction, are complete.
The contingency will hold, said Lee, still breathless after reliving the discovery of the rotten timber.
“The whole building rests on that beam,” said Mike Hickey, the field superintendent for the Auburn contractor.
If it had rotted a lot more, the whole project would have been in jeopardy, he said.
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