NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Clint Nelson with Interfaith Housing told the Board of County Commissioners on Wednesday that the asbestos abatement is still going on in the old St. Elizabeth's Hospital property.
"The local abatement contractor has been doing great work," Nelson said. "They are stretched pretty thin. They are about 60 days behind our expected completion date. Where they are at on the abatement work right now, American Metro Environmental, they are our inspector out of Wichita that reports to KDHE. We were in the building three weeks ago. All of the fryable ACM, the asbestos containing material has been packaged and removed from the site. That's the insulation, that's the ceiling texture, the ceiling tile. That's all off-site. That's been cleared. The last piece of the abatement is the original windows. Apparently, asbestos was a binder for window glazing. Rather than renting an aerial, they have had to tweak their proposal, they decided, rather than renting an aerial and doing it from the exterior, they would go in and grind out all of the window frames, remove them, package them. It's been very time consuming, but they have stuck to their number."
Demolition will be next after they get the window frames out.
"As of last Friday, we received five demolition quotes back from an RFP that we released," Nelson said. "The numbers are all over the board. There's a range from about $400,000 difference in the demolition cost. I will say, one of the more experienced contractors, in my opinion, was the low bid. They've done a lot of metro urban demolition, been 45 years in the business. We do know what that real number is, to not only remove the building, but pull all the footings out of the ground, import, grade, compaction, the site would be build ready."
They've got to figure out how to pay for the demolition, but they want to do that sooner than later.
"We've got a wonderful redevelopment plan that I pray we're able to move forward on," Nelson said. "I really think it would be a stimulus for that area of town and kind of a unique design for Hutch. That's our goal. We're still moving forward. My hope is that we find a mechanism to fund demolition."
Nelson does not want to assume debt to get it done, but he doesn't yet have an answer for that at this point.
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