Alexandria’s City Hall renovation faced a major challenge this summer with the removal of additional asbestos, city staff told City Council on Tuesday (Sept. 22).
Contractors working on the massive renovation project spent 10 weeks and more than $3 million in reserve funds to demolish and safely remove an entire section of asbestos-contaminated wall facing King Street that was installed in the 1960s.
“That was obviously a major challenge for the project, because essentially the entire wall system is now boxed up and categorized as Alexandria City property and shipped to a specialty disposal facility in Ohio,” Jeremy McPike, the city’s director of general services, told City Council.
He added, “We have not planned the additional three or so million dollars for asbestos, and so that takes away from our contingency.”
In the meantime, McPike said that workers have found structural deficiencies in the building. In one area, the building’s roof is supported by three four-by-fours.
“Those are not true dimensional four-by-fours, but basically, you wouldn’t put your own household deck supported by that,” McPike said. “There’s lots of other small things like that that we’ve been working through the building now that we’ve exposed much of the structure.”
The update also comes as the city government is looking to ease the burden of City Hall construction on surrounding businesses.
Jenine Kotob, the city’s assistant director of capital projects, said that work crews discovered a poster from a play in the 1870s, as well as some architectural oddities.
“Just for me as an architect, there’s beauty in that seeing old and new come together, the structural phenomena of two different eras actually meeting,” Kotob said. “A lot of the challenges, but also opportunities are going through how do we work around these structural challenges?”
McPike said next up will be demolition of the 1960s building addition, as well as the excavation of the basement and parking garage demolition.
“There’ll be a lot of activity and there’ll be noise involved with any demolition for the foreseeable future,” McPike said.
Mayor Alyia Gaskins said that the project offers the city a chance to learn its history while improving safety.
“I think what is so important for the public to take away from this is that much of this project is about preserving the structure that we love and that we need, and that there were a lot of things behind the wall that were impacting the safety of this building, which then ultimately impacts our ability to provide residents with key services and connection to their government,” Gaskins said.
