At its two most recent meetings, the Hoboken Housing Authority Board of Commissioners moved to address some of the largest and most chronic infrastructure issues in Hoboken’s public housing projects. In addition to awarding a contract to replace the elevator at 501 Marshall Drive, the board made significant steps toward fixing the electronic door locking system in some buildings and finding homes for remaining backup generators that the HHA purchased after Superstorm Sandy.
Interim Executive Director Robert DiVincent called the 501 Marshal Drive elevator “probably the most horribly maintained and disgusting elevator that I have ever seen in my life.”
“The elevator is going to be shut down for a period of somewhere around 10 weeks while we do a rebuilding of the entire elevator shaft,” added DiVincent. “The shaft needs to be totally gutted.”
Generators
For a year and half, 14 massive backup generators have sat in a HHA parking lot. Purchased as an infrastructure insurance policy after Sandy wiped out power in the Housing Authority for two weeks, the backups ended up never being installed, and all the existing generators damaged in Sandy were repaired.
In December, the HHA board OK’ed a $407,000 contract to install six of the backup generators at the most low-lying buildings in the public housing campus. On March 12, the board approved a $24,124 increase in the contract amount to fund larger concrete pads for the generators than were originally expected.
DiVincent said the change order was “not foreseeable because we weren’t even sure of the location where we were putting the generators initially.”
The new functional locks could be in place by the beginning of summer.
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However, DiVincent said the HHA didn’t have the money to install all of them, especially with other crucial infrastructure issues like the broken lock system and elevators outstanding.
At its March 12 meeting, the HHA board approved a resolution authorizing DiVincent to sell the remaining eight generators at auction or through an interlocal sale to another government agency.
“My expectation is to put them for sale for what we purchased them for,” said DiVincent. “I don’t want to have a loss. If the loss is minimal, I will bring it to the Board and let you know. It might be well worth the loss to have that money usable for us to do other things…”
The HHA paid $32,500 each for the six remaining 100-kilowatt generators and $69,000 each for the two remaining 200-kilowatt generators, though the money was covered by flood insurance proceeds.
DiVincent indicated that there was a large number of housing authorities in New Jersey were interested in buying generators thanks to fresh memories of the flooding wrought by Sandy. In addition, he said at this past Thursday’s meeting that the city of Hoboken was potentially open to buying two of the eight excess generators, and that he hoped to move forward on an interlocal services agreement with the city.
At its April 1 meeting, the Hoboken City Council added $1,830 to its engineering consultant contract with EI Associates so that the firm could meet with the HHA and determine if any of the eight backup generators on order met its needs.
Door locks
Superstorm Sandy also knocked out the electronic swipe card door locking system in many of the same low-lying HHA buildings that are receiving new backup generators. The system has yet to be fixed, leading to safety concerns among residents, and some, including HHA Board Chair Dana Wefer, have questioned why the Authority spent much of its flood insurance proceeds on buying backup generators instead of fixing the door locks.
After more than two years, the HHA is finally seeing movement on the locks. At its March 12 meeting, the HHA Board approved a $13,125 contract with United Technology Partners to serve as the project manager for the door lock upgrades.
DiVincent said he picked the firm because they had been involved in the initial installation of the lock system and knew what was in place.
At this past Thursday’s HHA Board meeting, DiVincent announced that the Housing Authority was officially out to bid for a contractor to do the actual lock upgrades, based on bid specifications generated by United Technology Partners.
In conversations, DiVincent & United Technology Partners agreed that the cost of replacing the locks would run at around $250,000.
If all goes according to plan, the new functional locks could be in place by the beginning of summer.
Carlo Davis may be reached at cdavis@hudsonreporter.com.