The city of Charleston will tear down the office and maintenance building at Spring Hill Cemetery and build a new one in its place, City Council members learned Monday.
The structure, with material costs of up to $150,000, will be designed and built by city workers starting this fall, City Manager David Molgaard said.
"This is something we've known for a while we've needed to do," Molgaard told members of council's Finance Committee. "The building looks OK from the outside, but inside it's not so good. It's had structural issues since I moved into this job" in 2003.
The red-roofed wood-framed building has served as the cemetery office for many years. It serves as the base for cemetery superintendent Perry Cox, his assistants, occasional mapping and records contractors and the maintenance crew, Molgaard said. The ground floor beneath the offices is used to store maintenance supplies.
"We're moving forward with this now," he said. "We're moving the offices temporarily to 601 Morris St., our warehouse building. We have to get telephone and computer lines arranged. Then we have to do demolition."
The project should take six to nine months, Molgaard said.
"We're working with our construction crews and engineers as to the design. It will be a very simple design. The initial budget is $110,000 to $150,000 for materials."
The city of Charleston will tear down the office and maintenance building at Spring Hill Cemetery and build a new one in its place, City Council members learned Monday.
The structure, with material costs of up to $150,000, will be designed and built by city workers starting this fall, City Manager David Molgaard said.
"This is something we've known for a while we've needed to do," Molgaard told members of council's Finance Committee. "The building looks OK from the outside, but inside it's not so good. It's had structural issues since I moved into this job" in 2003.
The red-roofed wood-framed building has served as the cemetery office for many years. It serves as the base for cemetery superintendent Perry Cox, his assistants, occasional mapping and records contractors and the maintenance crew, Molgaard said. The ground floor beneath the offices is used to store maintenance supplies.
"We're moving forward with this now," he said. "We're moving the offices temporarily to 601 Morris St., our warehouse building. We have to get telephone and computer lines arranged. Then we have to do demolition."
The project should take six to nine months, Molgaard said.
"We're working with our construction crews and engineers as to the design. It will be a very simple design. The initial budget is $110,000 to $150,000 for materials."
The money comes out of the city's general fund, he said.
"It's not cemetery money," he said. "We have it in a facility maintenance fund. It's the same money used to do this building [City Hall]."
The cemetery's committee has agreed to buy new furniture for the building, using money from a cemetery endowment fund, Molgaard said.
In other business, council members agreed to issue licenses for stands for four taxis to C&H Taxi. The stands will be on the west side of Capitol Street beside the Chase Bank building, near the corner of Virginia Street and across from several downtown bars.
Jeb Corey, CEO of C&H Taxi, said the idea is to provide an area where cabs could easily pull out of traffic to pick up or drop off passengers.
"Ideally you never want to look over and see people standing there or cabs standing there," Corey said. "On really busy nights, like Halloween or New Year's Eve, you might look out and see cabs standing.
"Maybe, if this is successful, we can revive the idea of taxi stands elsewhere in Charleston," he said.
Reach Jim Balow at ba...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5102.
