A report on the condition of an old biotech facility in Elon has given the town’s leaders some pause about their proposed purchase of this property to house many of the town’s operations.
Elon’s town council took no immediate action on Tuesday in response to this 71-page assessment of the edifice that LabCorp currently owns at 112 Orange Drive. The contents of this report have nevertheless left the council’s members with some serious misgivings about this facility – which, according to the report, may cost as much as $7 million to renovate to suit the town’s needs.
Last fall, the town council tentatively agreed to purchase this property for $3 million in order to relocate the town’s municipal building and police station from their current digs at 104 South Williamson Avenue.
[Story continues below special subscription offer.]
MORE ELON NEWS THAN YOU’LL FIND ANYWHERE ELSE! SUBSCRIBE TODAY!
With 56,000 square feet of floor space and grounds that extend over about 6 acres, LabCorp’s facility had initially struck the town’s leaders as a vast improvement over their current 7,000-square-foot HQ, which is squeezed into a comparatively tight corner at the juncture of Trollinger and Williamson avenues. With these considerations in mind, the council signed off on a purchase agreement this past October that offers LabCorp $3 million for the building – or about $1.1 million more than its assessed tax value of $1,852,803.
LabCorp’s acceptance of this offer has given way to a due diligence period, which essentially allows the town’s representatives to kick the tires and look under the hood for their proposed acquisition.
As part of this process, the town’s administrators have commissioned a firm called Pilot Environmental to conduct an environmental assessment of the property. They’ve also retained Moseley Architects to make a thorough inventory of the structure, which comprises a brick office building some 14,000 square feet in size and a warehouse with about 42,000 square feet of space. In the meantime, the town’s public works department has done its own site inspections, while the building’s structural and mechanical elements have received a thorough going-over from Alley, Williams, Carmen & King, a civil engineering firm that provides the town with engineering services.
Elon’s town manager, Richard Roedner, presented the results of these various assessments when Elon’s town council convened its first meeting of the New Year on Tuesday.
In his report to the council, Roedner conceded that Pilot Environmental had found some asbestos floor tiles, which will have to be removed from the building, but little else in the way of contamination. He added, however, that Moseley had turned up far more items of note in its inquiry into the state of the building.
“This a 40-plus-year-old building, so there are some maintenance issues,” he went on to explain. “There’s ceiling tile staining – primarily in the office area. There’s ponding on the roof…There are some drainage issues internal to the site.…and pavement conditions are not optimal.”
Roedner acknowledged that of particular concern to the architectural firm was the building’s roof, which would need to be replaced before the town moves onto the premises. He added that the roof is home to 11 HVAC units, some of which are near the end of their life expectancy and should be swapped out with the roof.
Roedner went on to describe some of the maintenance issues within the structure – the lion’s share of which, he said, are within the area that has served as a warehouse. He said that the town’s consultants estimate that it may cost as much $4.4 million to renovate this wing to suit the town’s needs. He admitted that the cost could be even higher depending on the part of the building that the town’s police force commandeers. In the meantime, he pointed to another $2.7 million in potential costs to revamp the red brick office area.
Roedner went on to add the most urgent upgrades to this building would set the town back about $1.3 million for the first year after it takes possession of the property.
The town manager urged the council to consider this potential expense ahead of its next meeting on January 26. He added that its members will need to make a decision that evening about the proposed property purchase in order to take appropriate action before the end of the due diligence period on January 28.
