The work on King Chapel is moving forward, with Mount Vernon Historic Preservation Commission giving a certificate of appropriateness for the work on the first two phases of the project.
Scott Allen, with OPN Architects, presented the plans for the first two phases of the project at the commission meeting. Cornell College needed a permit to begin work on the first phases of the project, and because the building is a historic building and in a historic district, MVHPC has to approve of the work.
Allen said rough early estimates for the project’s first two phases are $27 million. Those funds come from insurance payments for the damage, FEMA reimbursement, SHIPO funding, historic tax credits and a private donor who is contributing to the building.
Phase 1A will be getting the framework of stabilizing elements throughout the building. Another element OPN will be doing in phase 1A will be administering grout barriers throughout the building.
“What we found as we looked around the building is that the consistency of grout in parts of the building wildly varies,” Allen said. “We’re administering that all over to help have a firmer foundation.
Phase 1B will be the shell stabilization and outside envelope for the project. It will enable the building to be better secured as work goes to installing new steel trusses at the roof of the building.
“We’ve determined that the wood truss structure was not adequate to take the weight of the slate roof, and has been sagging over time,” Allen said. “By replacing all the trusses to the building above the ceiling, that will make the roof more solid.”
Faux trusses that adorn the interior ceiling as an art element will be removed during this process, but the plan is to reinstall those when work is completed.
Another part of Phase 1B will be replacing a staircase in the southwest tower with a more modern staircase. “The spiral staircase in that tower is not up to code, and we’ll be replacing it,” Allen said.
There will also be some work to replace some of the slate tiles on the building’s roof, some of which were damaged during the derecho.
Another part of the project will be installing storm windows to the exterior of the building, there to help protect some of the historic glass. Allen said those will stretch even to the lower portion of the building, which were the ones most impacted during the derecho.
Phase 2 will be the work that happens to the interior of the building. One of the changes will be taking two center windows on the ground floor of the building and helping to turn them into doors to help with traffic flow into the building.
Work on Phases 1A and 1B will begin this year, some of the work on those phases happening in tandem. The design and work planned for Phase 2 will go out for bids in September of this year, with that work slated to begin after and stretch into the next year.
Allen said OPN Architects has worked on projects on several historic buildings, including Terrace Hill, Old Capitol and Brucemore, and every project has given them more experience.
Randy Brown asked if there were any plans to clean the exterior stone of the building. Allen said that there will be some replacement stones, and some tuckpointing or repointing in areas, but no designated plans for a cleaning to all the stones on the building.
Kellie Ploegge from Cornell College said that the work by Scott Ladwig in determining the right architects and contractors for this project was crucial to the project getting to where it is today.
“We’re almost five years post-derecho, but we’ve needed all these contractors and architects to get a scope of what repairs are needed for the building,” Ploegge said.
Julie Barnes from Cornell said that the project has had so many reviews because of the historic nature of the building and proposed fixes to make sure that the correct work is being done to address the building. She assisted the application for FEMA funds and insurance following the derecho and is continuing work on the project.