Updating an old Bureau building

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After strengthening and re-roofing the Administration Building and adjoining Annex Building on Park Street, the Bureau of Reclamation has moved on to its Date Street Complex to make it earthquake-safe as well.

Under a separate $3 million contract, the Glendale, Ariz.-based Candelaria Corp. has begun an eight-month project that will see the older buildings of the Lower Colorado River regional offices get a new makeover from floor to ceiling.

"The contract calls for us to remove the roof and design a new one that includes the truss system," said Moses Moya, a civil engineer with the Bureau. "The building will get a new floor, a new heating-ventilation-air-conditioning system, a new electrical design and installation, a new fire alarm system and communications."

Only the front offices, which were constructed in 1931 and 1945 for the building wing at the rear of the L-shaped building, are being rehabilitated.

"We couldn't start the project until we moved all the folks out," Moya said Feb. 1. "And we just finished moving all their equipment out this week. We've already removed the shingles that didn't prove to be a bother to the documents or files below."

About three dozen employees working in the front section of the building were relocated to the BOR's Railroad Avenue Building nearby.

They will be there until some time in October when the 9,200-square-foot building is completed.

The workers are part of the Boulder Canyon Operations Office, which is responsible for river operations on the Colorado River.

Some of those responsibilities include water accounting -- who gets water and how much there is -- as well as power billing and crop assessment reports.

Under normal circumstances, the contractor would not have to contact the State Historic Preservation Office in Carson City about the demolition because there was no work planned on the building's exterior.

But later, BOR spokesman Steve Leon said there will be consultations with the State Historic Preservation Office to make sure all the work is meeting federal and state historic guidelines.

"This is what we call selective demolition," Moya explained, noting that the shell of the building will remain unchanged. "We have full intentions, though, to do demolition from the basement through the top of the roof."

Moya added that the outside would look nearly identical to the way it has for a number of years.

"We'll repaint the building with pretty much the same colors," he said. "The roof will be the same color, but the shingle roof from before is being replaced by a tile roof, which means we have to beef up the trusses before we can put the new roof on."

Candelaria and Reclamation officials are employing a re-use program called the Green Building Process, which salvages and reuses as much original material on the inside as possible.

"Anything on the side of the building can be reused or salvaged," Moya said. "That means things like doors, interior trim, moldings, even the rafters."

About this time last year, Candelaria crews started work on the Annex Building that required about 50 workers to be temporarily relocated to the Railroad Avenue offices.

When that was completed this summer, the contractor returned for the second phase of the $1.9 million seismic rehabilitation job that was completed two months ago, which allowed more than 60 workers to return to the Administration Building.