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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMinutes 1996-02-21 Mayor Jack Drago Council: Joseph A. Fernekes Eugene R. Mullin ~-"'John R. Penna Robert Yee MINUTES City Council Municipal Services Building Community Room February 21, 1996 106 AGENDA ADJOURNED REOULAR MEETINO CALL TO ORDER: (Cassette No. 1) ROLL CALL: Capital Improvement Program Budget - retrofitting of City Hall; retrofitting of the Library; the sidewalk pro- gram and East of 101 funding, z~/20 Councilman Penna Arrived at the Meeting at 7:12 p.m. A~TION TAKEN ADJOURNED REGULAR MEETING 7:07 p.m. Mayor Drago presiding. Council Present: Council Absent: Fernekes, Mullin, Penna, Yee and Drago. None. City Manager. Wilson related: the study session was to cover some of the capital items we have been discussing; he will ask for a closed session to be added to the Agenda,' which requires a 2/3 vote for the City Attorney needs direction before the next meeting on pending litigation; staff is in the process of putting together all capital improvement budget documents with Council's suggestions incorporated and their order of priority; putting East of 101 projects on hold, because of the funding source it is being delayed and they will come back and address the policy issues; boards are being processed for education purposes and the Director of Public Works plans to use acetate overlays and demonstrate multi- level planning; staff will focus on the retrofitting of City Hall tonight for there are any number of studies on what can occur; at what level the repair work should be done to the facility; questions about the use of the facility in the future; whether to remain as a functioning City Hall, museum or arts center for historic purposes and a new City Hall built on the site; the site could be the existing parking lot or the old annex and take that down and put up a multi- story; right now there is money in the capital im- provement budget, some is redevelopment funds for the restoration of the Library for redevelopment funds cannot be used for City Hall; Director of Public Works will walk Council through and the Consultant will explain the Codes and their analysis. Director of Public Works Gibbs explained: the first thing they did was look at the probability of earth- 2/21/96 Page 1 AGENDA AC_TIQN TAKEN .. Capital Improvement Program Budget - Continued. quakes in this area and the analysis for a 30 year 9.3 event on the Richter Scale; the UBC explains how the structure is to be designed and the UCBC is for building conservation and historic buildings and allows you to analyze the building without going to the high standards of the Building Code; these build- ings are old, have brick and are unreinforced ma- sonry; we are located within five miles of the San Andreas fault which brings us into an intensity of a level of 8; the scale is from 1 - 12 and depends on how close you are to the fault; the soil comes into play with the analysis of the building; if there is an earthquake over the 8 magnitude both City Hall and the Library would fall down and be a loss and de- pending on the time of day - there will be loss of lives; retrofitting to the UBC, City Hall would per- form as a new building; the cost is $375,000 to do the construction only on the Library without reloca- tion of employees; relocation cost for City Hall $745,000 and bringing the people back, plus renting space brings it to one million; estimate for a new building is $150.00 per sq. ft., potentially knocking down the annex with a construction cost of three million dollars which is the same cost as retrofitting both buildings; if nothing is done to City Hall it has to be closed and the only occupancy for the building is for someone to use it a few hours a day; etc. Councilman Penna was bothered that Europe has buildings on major faults in Italy and Greece that are built on blocks that were not demolished because of earthquakes, but because of battles. He stated, cer- tainly the earthquakes in Italy and Greece are as strong as they are in this area. City Hall is a build- ing built on solid ground, no fill here, it is rock and questioned how they could come up with their anal- ysis. Mr. Evan Reis, Degenkolb Engineers, replied: the earthquakes in Italy and Greece are infrequent, maybe 200 to 10,000 years in between occurrences; now those buildings are old, but not that old and they do collapse from earthquakes. He related: his firm was asked to perform a risk analysis per the UBC levels; what the levels would be if the buildings were brought up to a new level; he showed illustrations of his firm's evaluations on doing nothing to the buildings, bringing them up to UCB and UCBC standards and how those would fair in damage under various earthquake levels; his 2/21/96 Page 2 AGENDA _ACIIQN TAKEN .._.Capital Improvement Program Budget - Continued. firm has been evaluating damage from earthquakes throughout the world for fifty years and has data on thousands of buildings during earthquakes; he stated that their experience and technical expertise led to the charts in question on earthquake intensity levels; most people tend to acknowledge earthquake damage by its magnitude, but that is only one side of the equation, the other side is the distance you are from the earthquake; in Loma Prieta they were on solid soil, but in Santa Cruz buildings collapsed, as well as in Guam due to the soil; the scale is one to twelve and one you barely feel; a five will awaken you from bed, you will see shaking and pictures coming off the shelves and breaking, but a twelve means almost all buildings are destroyed and new buildings have damage and can collapse; in an eight intensity earthquake old masonry buildings normally suffer partial to total collapse; an 8.3 intensity earth- quake they expect to occur on the San Andreas fault; 30 miles away from Loma Prieta we felt the earth- quake, things ,rattled, but there was no structural damage; they looked at City Hall for life safety in a large earthquake and how much damage as a per- centage of the replacement cost, and what percent- age could you expect; if employees were relocated it could be for as long as one and one half years; because City Hall is an URM building there is high risk to life safety and damage up to 80%, when 50% is considered a total loss, and if you replace the building you are looking at a year and a half of down time; UBC standards would make the building perform as a new building; they would keep the bricks and,reinforce the concrete, you have reduced the life risk factor and damage will be reduced to cracks in the walls; you have to weigh the cost of the retrofitting with the loss of life and property. Mayor Drago asked, if we are going to consider this building as an historical building and remove people for a museum or whatever, there is no longer a need to use the basement, so couldn't the building just be braced to the basement. Director of Public Works Gibbs replied: it doesn't make any difference because that is the strongest area of the building, the basement is a bunker al- ready and yes, it will be tied into the basement; one way is with the exterior wall to gunite a six inch new wall inside the building and tie that at intervals to the brick and make the whole structure monoli- thic; they put rods and grout into the rods and pull it 2/21/96 Page 3 AGENDA A~TION TAK_EN ._3~apital Improvement Program Budget - Continued. 2/21/96 Page 4 down tight to tie it all together and that is reinforc- ing the brick; etc. Discussion followed: why use the 1988 UBC; there was the earthquake in Japan and Guam; Japan does not retrofit a building, they just wait until they want to demolish a building to build a new one; UCB is rewritten every year because of earthquakes; 1993 or 1994 UCB may be more restrictive than the 1988 Code; it would be different if City Hall was a steel frame building; what guaranty does the Council have that the three million dollars won't run up to five million dollars and the building will still be unfunctional; if the Council is going to wrap this up at the least cost and utilize the rooms better - that would take us back to the Code for historic build- ings that allows us to do less work; if the historic code was used, what is the savings; that is close to the full Code level of the UBC; the City has two million for City Hall, but if the historic code is used, then redevelopment funds can relieve the General Fund; there is also the relocation and rental costs while we are out of here; City Hall needs drainage improvements, as well as repainting and ADA improvements whenever the retrofitting is done; using the historic code would only save $50,000; the parking funds could come from the Parking District; we will lose six inches only in the perimeter walls; if a new building is built you don't need to rent a building you can just move in when it is finished; Finance and the Attorney would have to be relocated, so there is a cost; originally the idea was to demolish the annex, put parking underneath and build a multi-story building to house City Hall and the Annex employees in 15,000 sq. ft.; go ahead with the Library using the UCBC; there is a State Historic Code that allows alleviation from the UBC and there might be additional ADA require- ments; Councilman Yee was not comfortable in making that kind of a decision on moving the City Hall to point C for he does not have enough data to make that decision for these people are picking these numbers out of the air and he would hate to have to come up with five million dollars later on; staff can go ahead with estimates for a new building; Council has to know for a fact that redevelopment will take care of this building, otherwise it is not worth it; there has to be a plan on future needs and what the City Hall is going to look like before a decision can be made; Councilman Penna likes the idea of pre- serving this building for its historical value and it AGENDA ACTION TAKEN _._Capital Improvement Program Budget - Continued. Closed Session pursuant to GC 54956.9 - initiation of li.tigation- one case. ECALL TO ORDER: is the symbol of the City; he likes the idea of using redevelopment funds to create a performing arts center or museum; he would like to see all City offices in one building and one built to replace this building that should become something else - like the idea of performing arts; Councilman Mullin noted this was the same conversation that surfaced years ago with the relocation of the MSB, because when you split services you divide the City and the argument was we could not build here for everyone to be here, but there wasn't the money or the will; he felt it was an exciting project, but it is completely conceptual; we need to see what it will look like and it has to tie in architecturally, because you are not going to okay a 90s building in with a 20s structure; City Manager Wilson stated the project may have tripled in cost for they were only talking about the Annex and City Hall people in the building and there was no thought to bring back any other De- partments, but only to replicate the space here but not to commingle; he is thinking of a rectangular, no frills building; Councilman Mullin wants to see site plans and renderings; Mayor Drago suggested a cherrete from the San Mateo Architects; City Man- ager is planning on spending a few thousand and getting a rough concept; Mayor Drago is bother by the steel buildings coming down like the URM buildings and is more interested in the soil condi- tion, for this building is not going anywhere, it is built on a rock; a building owner does not expect his building to be damaged, so engineers are always trying to make buildings better; buildings on fill; ete City Manager Wilson stated the sidewalk program appears to be without change and staff will maintain the existing process where we keep the ordinance on the books, but we will do the work ourselves. M/S Fernekes/Penna - To add an item to the Agenda pursuant to GC 54954.2 that arose too late for the Agenda for a Closed Session on initiation of litiga- tion. Carried by unanimous voice vote. Council adjourned to a Closed Session at 8:09 p.m. to discuss the item added to the Agenda. Mayor Drago recalled the meeting to order at 9:06 p.m., all Council was present, no action was taken and direction was given. 2/21/96 Page 5 A~ENDA ACT!QN TAKEN RESPECTFULLY SUBMI'ITED, APPROVED. Barbara A. Battaya, City Clerk ~.J ~~ City of South San Francisco City of South San Francisco The entries of this Council meeting show the action taken by the City Council to dispose of an item. Oral communica- tions, arguments and comments are recorded on tape. The tape and documents related to the items are on file in the Office of the City Clerk and are available for inspection, review and copying. 2/21/96 Page 6