Steve Mensing, Editor and the RFP Staff
♦In the final days before the Local Government Commission puts the question of the Downtown Central Office to rest, the Rowan Free Press uncovered additional barriers and unanswered questions to this project going forward. Here is the short list:
• The largest hurdle: The Local Government Commission (LGC). This commission, led by the State Treasurer, is tasked with protecting cities and counties from financial ruin and problematic loans. The LGC strictly adheres to state statutes governing loans. No doubt they will have little challenge in discerning the problem of calling the school systems Central Office, designed with the sole purpose of housing school administrators, a “commercial building”. The City of Salisbury’s reputation for distorting reality is widely known in Raleigh and will no doubt impact any case they present. The Local Government Commission is diligent in gathering facts. Few people expect the City of Salisbury to succeed. Most insiders expect the saga of the Downtown Central Office to end in Raleigh.
• An estimated additional 2.5 million dollars will likely be required to build the Taj Mahal on extremely loose and watery backfill. Over the past week we learned the water table at 329 S. Main is between 12 feet and 19 feet from the surface. This means the backfill here has the consistency of a thick soup–a worst case scenario for the foundations of a 3 story building. The current project book and renderings, as of July 2013, fail to show a substantial enough base on which to construct a 3 story building. Building on what amounts to sludge generally requires steel-reinforced concrete piers, drilled all the way down to bedrock, or if the bedrock is more than 35 feet down, on “belled” steel-reinforced concreted piers. The current construction proposals will no doubt lead to instability, settling, and structural damage through buckling, bowing, fracture, and perish the thought–collapse.
• Vapor intrusion from unremediated groundwater contamination. The property at 329 S. Main still lacks “No Further Action” letter from NC DENR. A strong petroleum odor was present during a recent pumping out of a monitoring well at 329 S. Main. Construction, at the Integro site next door, encountered an oily plume late last week and reported it. Current project books and plans for 329 S. Main show only minimal vapor intrusion slabs. These are certainly not enough protection for the Central Office’s future inhabitants. Vented spaces and special air moving fans, while expensive, are needed to push toxic vapors outside the building and prevent dangerous vapor buildup within the building’s enclosed spaces.
The administrators, while they might have ample desks to wolf down their sandwiches over lunch, will likely experience discomfort from labored breathing in an oil refinery atmosphere. No doubt many might woozily dream of the good old days at Long Street.
Here is information on vapor intrusion:
http://www.cleanvapor.com/what-is-vapor-intrusion.html
Structural fracturing: (from wintersoul1 on Flickr)
Indoor buckling:
How groundwater gets contaminated:
How vapor intrusion takes place: (from Image from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences)
More on vapor intrusion: (from the Interstate Technology Regulatory Council) 
The featured image illustrating how soft site fill causes foundation cracking and structural fracturing is from the International Association of Certified Home Inspectors.
