Council votes against Wilson Doors property
By Kellen Olshefski
Correspondent
If one thing’s for certain, it’s that a new City of Elkhorn Department of Public Works garage will not be located on the Wilson Doors property.
Norman Barrientos, of Barrientos Design and Consulting, provided councilmembers with a presentation Aug. 21 outlining his analysis of the City of Elkhorn Department of Public Work’s future space needs, as well as how two sites the city was looking at could be designed for a new Department of Public Work’s garage. The City of Elkhorn Common Council voted unanimously in favor of withdrawing an estimated $1.2 million offer on the Wilson Doors property, one of two sites Barrientos looked at.
City Administrator Sam Tapson said at that meeting the project originally began as a space needs study by Barrientos, looking strictly at what the department needed, later morphing into an assessment of two possible sites the city was looking at, including Wilson Doors and a property off of Getzen and Centralia streets.
Barrientos said his site needs analysis was based off of several factors, including how the department operates, the size of its fleet, what types of things it stores, how the crew moves throughout the day and what items are switched around throughout the year.
Barrientos said parking is key, something the design and consulting firm typically starts with, tabulating the number of trucks in a municipality’s fleet and dividing them up in to heavy, medium and light. Barrientos defined heavy trucks as things such as plow trucks, medium as single axle trucks with no implements, and light as things like large SUVs.
He said ample parking is important, noting a study by a county he was working with that indicated the most common way crew members get injured in public works garages is hitting an object.
“Tight quarters can end up in claims or injuries of the crews,” Barrientos said. “So, as an architect, our job is to protect health, safety and welfare, so we’re trying to leave enough room for them to operate, not only for parking, but also for doing their repairs too.”
He said the goal with the analysis was to design for growth, as the city will want the building to last many years.
“We are looking at a good 10 years of probable growth for your municipality in terms of service and fleet type, even staffing to some degree,” Barrientos said.
As such, he said they decided to add parking for two heavy, one medium and two light pieces of equipment, with additional stalls for smaller items, such as small tractors and generators.
For the rest of the story, pick up a copy of the Aug. 31 Elkhorn Independent.
