Regarding the Friday article, “Former library could become transitional facility for offenders”: We think people should have a help up; however, it sounds like our city and county governments are coming up with another costly bandage to solve the homeless offender issue.
The renovation of the Carnegie Library in Everett, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, would be a lot more costly than estimated for a homeless shelter.
The costs are:
1. We would be renovating a building on the National Register of Historic places. Doesn’t that count for something? Aren’t there some rules and regulations regarding the use of these buildings? This building was constructed as a library in 1905. It was Carnegie’s payback to America after he amassed a fortune in his steel mills. The renovation would “gut” a beautiful building which was not wired and plumbed for 20 bedrooms with toilets and showers on the first floor and a mental facility on the second floor. It makes more sense to us that this becomes the home of Snohomish County Museum.
2. It seems the cost of these major changes would be more than the $1.6 million from the state and $500,00 from the county — looks like the funds would not be sufficient to cover the actual cost of the remodel. And the additional cost would be an annual $1.2 million for maintenance (building, security and medical help).
As a comparison, we added another room with a half bath (no shower) to our house on Baker Avenue in 2000. The cost at that time was $45,000. In today’s money that would be about $75,000 a very conservative estimate. For 20 rooms, that equals $1.5 million. The job would be put out for bid using union laborers. We used a small construction company that did not use union laborers, which helped keep our costs down.
M. J. Donovan-Creamer
Robert J. Creamer
Everett
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