Is it still LEED certified if it falls apart?

Portland's Daily Journal of Commerce:

10-year-old Marion County building needs extensive repairs

The Salem Courthouse Square building, built in 2000, needs several structural repairs. (Photo courtesy Marion County)

The Courthouse Square building in Salem, home to Marion County government offices and Salem-Keizer Transit, was only two years old when occupants started to notice the building settling, in 2002. Grouting cracked and tiles came loose, said Dave Henderson, the county’s business services director.

Things got worse from there, said Henderson, who works in the building. “There are areas you can see the partition walls pulling away from the exterior walls,” he said. “The drop-in ceiling grid is visibly misaligned in some places.

“You have some places where floor tiles in the restrooms have popped and have had to be replaced.”

Marion County is now looking for an architectural and engineering team to repair the building. Structural problems with the building have resulted in cracks, ceiling deformation, uneven floors, and door and window misalignments, according to the county’s request for proposals.

Courthouse Square was built by Pence Kelly Construction Inc., which has since joined with LCG Co. to form LCG Pence Construction. Arbuckle Costic Architects was the designer and Century West Engineering was the structural engineer.

In 2008, David Evans and Associates prepared a structural evaluation of Courthouse Square for the county. The building’s floor slabs experienced excessive deflection, or displacement under a load, according to the DEA report issued in February 2008 and updated in April 2009.

The design of post-tensioned slabs on the top three floors of the five-story building appeared to not meet industry standards, according to the report: “Per DEA’s independent structural calculations, it appears that portions of the original structural floor slab design were inadequate with regard to code requirements for deflection criteria and the minimum required mild reinforcement for serviceability and/or ultimate strength.

“In addition, the design did not meet industry standards …”

The report recommends that portions of the building be strengthened as soon as possible; however, the building is safe to occupy while a strengthening plan is developed and implemented, according to the report.

More than 350 people work there, for Marion County and Salem-Keizer Transit combined, and the building gets hundreds of visitors each day, according to the county’s request for proposals. The building also holds the county’s core computing data center.

Henderson said he hopes work can be done in phases so county and transit employees can keep working during construction. Marion County uses roughly 80 percent of the building; Salem-Keizer Transit uses portions of the first and fifth floors.

County officials are monitoring the building, which is still settling, Henderson said. “The building has not yet stabilized.

“The most important thing we’ve done is confirm with three different engineering firms that the office is safe,” he said. “We’ve shared that information with people (who work there).”

The request for proposals calls for a design team to begin work in February. County officials don’t know how they’ll pay for the project yet, Henderson said, and won’t know the cost of the project until the design team takes a closer look at the building.

A contractor could start work on the repairs within a year, he said. . . .