New facility to replace 47-year-old structure built as mental hospital
Vicky Wedig
SLN staff
Construction of a new $15 million Health and Human Services Department building will begin this month on the Walworth County campus on Highway NN.
The 77,500-square-foot building will replace the 47-year-old building on the south side of County NN. The new building will be on the north side of NN between the Walworth County Judicial Center and Lakeland Health Care Center.
The county’s Health and Human Services and Public Works committees worked together to come up with a plan for the building, which was designed by Venture Architects in Milwaukee.
Miron Construction, of Neenah, was the lower bidder for the project with a bid of $14.92 million that was awarded in June. Miron is expected to break ground on the project this month, said Joe Kroll, the county engineer who is overseeing the project.
In addition to the construction costs, the county has incurred costs for architecture and will incur costs for communications infrastructure, technology, furniture, security systems and information technology, Kroll said. The county budgeted $24.1 million for the project, but expects to come in well under budget, said County Administrator Dave Bretl.
Bretl said the building will be paid for with cash on hand – no borrowing – under a county program implemented a few years ago that sets aside funds yearly for the depreciation value of its buildings.
Building’s origins
The existing Health and Human Services building was constructed in 1971 as a state-of-the-art mental health hospital, Bretl said. Former U.S. Rep. Les Aspin attended the groundbreaking ceremony back then, he said.
When inpatient beds dropped out in the late 1980s, the building was retrofitted as office space, Bretl said. The building went through a remodel around 2001-2002 when a wing was added to accommodate administration, and the county consolidated some of the functions of the Health and Human Services Department by moving Public Health and administration to the building, he said.
The Health and Human Services Department later refocused its mission and became more of a clinic setting, Bretl said.
Inefficiency
It has now been nearly 20 years since the remodel, and the multiple additions and changes that have been made to the building resulted in poor flow in space and difficulties with heating and cooling, Bretl said.
He said some of the things that made the building a good hospital – a huge courtyard open to the elements and wide corridors – make it a poor clinic and office building.
Health and Human Services Director Liz Aldred said the building is inefficient as the department works to create case management teams that work together across divisions. She said the former hospital rooms turned offices are all separated and make it difficult for staff to collaborate.
The new building will have more of a cubicle-type environment where staff can easily collaborate, Aldred said. And, it will have a single entrance where all HHS clients will enter and be directed to the proper department. The existing building has two separate entrances for different functions with secured space in between them, she said.
Fate of old building
The county has not yet determined what it will do with the old building when the new one is completed in late 2019, Bretl said.
He said a need exists in the area for inpatient beds for mental health. Now, when Walworth County residents need inpatient mental health services, they are transported to facilities outside the county. Bretl said the county is gauging interest in whether private providers are interested in purchasing the building and resuming its use as a mental health hospital. County committees, however, disagreed about pursuing that option.
The Health and Human Services Board directed staff in April to gauge interest from potential providers about either buying and using the building or tearing the building down and building a new mental health facility there. HHS transitioned responsibility for transporting patients to facilities outside the county to law enforcement beginning in January, and law enforcement is concerned about the amount of time transporting those patients will take them out of their communities, according to a June 7 memo from Bretl. Having a facility on the county campus would reduce that time and expense.
However, the county Public Works Committee voted 3-2 against pursuing that option. Disadvantages of selling the building to a private provider are that another landowner would be on the county campus, and the transaction would be at a greatly reduced cost, which Bretl said taxpayers might find too generous.
Demolishing the building is an option if the county doesn’t find another alternative, he said.
New facility
The new building at 1910 County Highway NN directly west of Lakeland Health Care Center and across from Aurora Lakeland Medical Center will be about the same size as the existing building, Kroll said.
It will house all of the departments that are in the existing building – behavioral health, mental health, public health, crisis intervention, the Aging and Disability Resource Center, children’s health and administration – and will add economic support services and child support.
Child support has always been a division of Health and Human Services but has been housed at the Walworth County Judicial Center, Bretl said.
Child support staff opposed the move to the new building, saying processes will take longer to complete because employees, parties who need or have support orders and the attorneys who represent the parties will have to travel back and forth between the two buildings.
But Aldred said child support has a lot of interconnection between other HHS divisions as well, and much of the work child support does with judges and the courts can be done electronically.
Child support staff will still be next to the courthouse for matters that require staff to appear in person, she said.
Bretl said several particular workers attend court proceedings frequently, but child support is part of the Health and Human Services Department and having it housed in the same building will allow child support staff the opportunity to participate in the culture of HHS rather than being an outlier on its own.
The county has not yet determined what the space in the Judicial Center that now houses the child support agency will be used for, Bretl said. But a space needs study is underway, he said, and having available space for administrative functions might alleviate the need for renovations in other county buildings.
