Central City Historic Building Inventory & Assessment

I want to acknowledge the following great people with whom I had the pleasure of collaborating this semester:  

 My Central City Clients, Lisa Roemhildt, and Ray Rears. It was an absolute pleasure to work with you – my only regret (and sadness), is that I didn’t have the entire academic school year to see the project through. I can’t wait to see those charming old buildings get a new life breathed into them – they are a treasure. I very much hope our paths cross again. 

My Project Advisor, Professor David Grimm. You’ve been a great inspiration and mentor this semester. And although the project required a considerable amount of work, it also provided a tremendous learning experience in equal measure. Thank you for your guidance, feedback, and sharing in my excitement of historic buildings. 

John Persichetti, Director of the Mines Capstone Program. I’m grateful you introduced me to the Central City Projects; it was the right choice for me. Thank you for the opportunity. 

Tessa Drinnan, my Technical Advisor. Your Forensic Engineering background was a perfect complement to this project (and fascinating!). Your advice and assistance when I reached out for help was what I needed to get untangled and forge ahead.

 And on a final note, a sincere thank you to the owner of the Doc Holliday Casino for permitting us to use his building as our testing ground.

Our project relied heavily on user needs analysis. As such, validation feedback was essential to our progress. 

2/20/20: client meeting to discuss project scope and deliverables, including proposed restrictions, exclusions, and assumptions. Key Design Validations:  

• General guidelines to be used focusing on structural integrity and safety, and observations of degradation or decline that could lead to future concerns. 
• Recommendations and observations for repairs will be placed in order of priority and are strictly advisory. Proceeding with rehabilitation measures will require outreach by owner/investor to an architect and general contractor. 
• One of our client’s requests was that a broad cost range anticipated for these interventions, be included in the assessment report. We will achieve this via an estimating software with the assistance of our technical advisor. It will also be strictly advisory. 

3/6/20: we met with the client to discuss preliminary design and findings, following our first walk-through. 

Key Design Validations:  

• The rapid visual screening would benefit from being divided into 2 phases: 

• • Discovery phase. Review available files, including structural engineering, as well as soil and foundation studies, and drawings that are relevant to the structure. The purpose of this is to put together a historical narrative and timeline of the building, checking for construction modifications and other changes that would better inform the site-visit. Then conduct a brief walk-through making a note of any obstacles related to access and walkability that should be resolved before the visual screening/inspection.
  • Visual screening/inspection phase. This phase will be repeated while iterating the design to its final streamlined and efficient format. 
• The assessment report will summarize the findings of the discovery phase and visual screening.
• Site-visits will be accelerated to a one-week frequency to meet project objectives.  

Regrettably, the project was disrupted shortly after our second site visit, so we were unable to continue the design process. 

Based on feedback from the case study property owner, there is some level of hesitation about having the assessment made public.  It may be a concern that is echoed by other owners should the assessments move forward.  One possible solution may be instituting a non-disclosure agreement between the Central City Office of Community Development, property owners and the Colorado School of Mines Team.  However, this would preclude access to potential investors.

Moving forward and time permitting, It may be more informative to have permission from several owners of vacant historic buildings in Central City to be able to conduct site visits for all, to improve or ensure the usability and applicability of the rapid visual screening/inspection.  

A further exploration about the types of structural issues most common to historic buildings, including a best practices maintenance and prevention schedule may be helpful to historic building owners, and could be made part of the assessment report.