The Guttenberg Community Center, the town-owned and operated facility that housed several activities, including many recreational programs for the town’s youngsters, has been closed due to extensive water damage and mold.
According to Guttenberg Mayor David Delle Donna, the damage is so severe that the building will more than likely have to be torn down and replaced.
“It looks like we’ll have to take it down,” Delle Donna said. “The estimates we’ve received to fix it are astronomical.”
Delle Donna said there were some concerns about the building’s safety in August, when some water leakages were spotted inside the center, so the town hired a private engineering firm, Schoor DePalma, to check on the facility’s condition. The result was not good.
“Originally, we thought that the community center was a new building, but we now found out that it was a renovated factory,” Delle Donna said. “When they did the renovations, they put a scratch coat of concrete, then put stucco over that. Over the years, water started to seep in between the two walls, and over time, the water started deteriorating the block wall.”
Delle Donna said that the engineering firm did extensive sound checks to determine the strength of the main walls.
“They found that the water had seeped too much and caused too many hollow spots,” Delle Donna said. “The water ripped certain areas of the inner walls away and we couldn’t see it, because it was behind an interior wall. The quality and the integrity of the main concrete has been compromised. That’s what holds up the main girders. One whole wall was totally deteriorated. It’s a recipe for disaster.”
When Delle Donna got the results of the survey from Schoor DePalma, he immediately ordered the center closed and all activities that were regularly held there moved to other locations.
While the center had been used as a meeting facility for local organizations, Delle Donna said that the only regular activities held there were the Guttenberg Recreation programs for smaller children, like arts and crafts, as well as practices for the town’s twirling, dance and cheerleading teams.
All of those activities have been moved to the cafeteria/auditorium at Anna L. Klein School.
“The Board of Education has been tremendously supportive in allowing us to use the school as much as possible,” said Delle Donna. “Very few groups were using it for meetings, so that is not a big problem. But losing the center is a problem that we were not prepared for.”
Recreation director Pat O’Connor has been diligent in rescheduling all of her activities to the school.
“The safety of the children was the first and foremost concern,” Delle Donna said. “It was paramount that we do something to keep them safe. Some people suggested that the closing of the center was political [due to the recent municipal election, where Delle Donna earned a second term as mayor], but that’s not the case. I wasn’t going to allow anything to happen to the kids.”
The town bought the building in the early 1980s and turned it into a community center. At the time, the building was believed to be fairly new. As Delle Donna now finds out, “no one knows exactly how old the building is.”
Delle Donna said that the initial estimate to fix the existing building is “somewhere around $800,000, which is a lot of money.”
Delle Donna believes that the cost to demolish the center and build a brand new one on the site would be around $1.2 million.
“I’ve already made phone calls about funding for a new building,” Delle Donna said. “Right now, we’re looking to recover some of the insurance money. But if we rebuild, I think we can apply for CDBG (Community Development Block Grants) money. At this point, I can’t see anything but taking it down.”
With the extensive water damage, there is always the concern of exposure of the people using the facility to mold and other bacteria, but Delle Donna said that the engineering firm did not suggest that there was any environmental problems or dangers at the center.
“The mold was a condition that was present, to explain how the concrete gets attacked and deteriorates,” Delle Donna said. “But no one said that it caused any danger to anyone else. There has been no suggestion of an environmental problem. No one is telling me that it’s something I should be worried about. It’s structure more than anything.”
Delle Donna said that the town will be able to deal with the situation. “Sure, it’s a problem, but it’s nothing we can’t deal with,” Delle Donna said. “It won’t be too hard to get a new building. We are a little inconvenienced now because of it, but we’ll manage.”
Delle Donna said that it is too early to speculate, but he can envision seeing a new community center being built on the site as early as next year.
“More realistically, it will be sometime in 2005,” Delle Donna said. “We’ll be on the fast track to getting a new center. We do have the use of the school, so we will continue to provide all the services we have been providing. Things were a little out of whack there for a while, but we’re fine now.”
Delle Donna said that the engineering firm will continue their survey of the building to determine the extent of the damage and to see if any other determinations about the mold need to made.