MACHIAS, Maine — The University of Maine at Machias has evacuated and closed one of its century-old buildings due concerns about its structural integrity.
The university announced in a Thursday afternoon news release that a recent “facility assessment” found that portions of the exterior brick walls at Kimball Hall might fail because of deterioration over the years.
“Water is infiltrating the mortar, freezing, thawing and then refreezing,” UMaine Machias President Joyce Hedlund said Thursday. “Large sections of the wall appear to be at risk.”
Hedlund said she was unsure whether the weight of snow on the roof might be a contributing factor as well.
Engineers examined the building on Feb. 13, and the school began notifying staff that they’d have to move to new locations on Tuesday after the holiday weekend.
About two dozen university staff and faculty will be moved to other locations on campus.
Kimball Hall, one of a dozen buildings on campus, has been largely empty this week because students and many faculty are away on winter break.
The building houses faculty offices, The Galley dining area, student gathering spaces and the UMaine Machias Facilities Division. There are no dormitories in Kimball Hall, though it originally served as a residence hall.
The building, one of the oldest on campus, hasn’t undergone a substantial renovation in more than 50 years, according to the university.
The university also has closed a sidewalk and roadway that pass close to the affected walls until they can be reinforced and deemed safe.
“We’re being careful and cautious about this,” Hedlund said.
“A more complete review with outside consulting engineers is expected to begin immediately to help inform decisions about the building’s future,” the release states.
As far as the future of the building, “we’re not mothballing it,” Hedlund added.
Maintaining, repairing, replacing or eliminating aging facilities has been a significant area of concern for University of Maine System officials.
A report released last year found that the University of Maine System’s seven campuses had a backlog of about $400 million in needed maintenance, and many of the buildings should have seen significant renovations more than a decade ago.
At the same time, the report stated that the system needs to reduce the size of its building infrastructure by 15 percent, or increase its student population by 4,000, for the ratio of square footage to population to be on par with other public higher education institutions in terms of building usage.
University of Maine System spokesman Dan Demeritt said Thursday that it’s too soon to know whether the system might consider selling or demolishing Kimball Hall as part of this size-reduction effort. System officials already plan on moving out of their downtown Bangor system offices later this year as part of that effort.
“We certainly recognize we have more space than we need,” he said, however the system doesn’t yet know how much Kimball Hall repairs might cost, or whether the campus could do without the space longterm.
Gov. Paul LePage’s proposed biennial budget includes $5 million in debt service — $2.5 million for fiscal year 2016 and $2.5 million for fiscal year 2017 — to help the system address its growing backlog of building maintenance costs. That funding also would allow the University of Maine System to leverage another $21 million in bonds to tackle other facility projects, according to Demeritt.
State Sen. Jim Dill has proposed LD 385, a bill that would authorize a $70 million bond issue to repair and improve buildings, roads and other infrastructure across the system’s campuses. Included in that bill is $1.5 million for “building envelope repairs” at UMaine Machias.
The largest chunk of funding — $35 million — would go toward renovations at Murray Hall at the flagship campus. The state would borrow $5.6 million to fix up Bailey Hall at the University of Southern Maine.
“Nearly 40 percent of our space across our 550 buildings has not been substantially updated in more than a half century,” Demeritt said in an email Thursday afternoon. “As part of our transition to a single, integrated administrative structure for Maine’s public universities, we are conducting a facilities review to ensure our physical plant is appropriately sized, modern, efficient and safe.”
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