Bad flooring could halt Pikeville town hall project
By Nick Hiltunen
Published in News on September 5, 2007 1:45 PM
PIKEVILLE -- A rotten floor underneath carpets at the old BB&T branch here could mean Mayor Herbert Sieger's town hall hopes fall through.
Town commission unanimously called for a work session on Sept. 17 at 7 p.m. before any more work is done on the building.
Sieger has said he wanted the old bank branch, which was donated to the town, to serve as a new town hall.
Then a mold problem was unearthed at the Main Street facility, and the town commission put $9,800 in a contract to fix it.
Now, "problems of a structural nature" mean the town won't move forward without the work session. Commissioner Edith McClenny said rotten flooring was the issue.
The mayor said he wanted to re-examine costs involved with renovating the building, which was abandoned by BB&T for a double-wide trailer.
"I'd like to set up a workshop to go over exactly what the facilities would need -- before we spend any more money," Sieger said.
BB&T, based in Winston-Salem, has since announced it is building a new facility at its present site, after buying three lots to accommodate it.
Commissioners Mrs. McClenny and Johnny Weaver have had objections to the idea of using the old BB&T facility as a town hall.
Both said they wanted a cost analysis done before the town accepted the building.
Weaver said he appreciated the mayor's proposal for a work session.
"I was going to suggest ... dropping the whole thing," Weaver said. "But I am willing to sit down at a workshop and lay everything out on the table."
Sieger said ServPro, which received the $9,800 contract to remove mold in the building, had taken "some of the carpet up, and knocked some of the walls down."
Town resident Rosie Colvin said she had concerns about mold's potential health impacts.
But Sieger and Commissioner Lyman Galloway said ServPro's testing showed the mold was a fairly harmless, common household variety.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says mold exposure can cause allergic reactions, asthma and other respiratory complaints.
But severity of mold exposure is based on the mold's species -- some molds are capable of producing mycotoxins, toxic substances produced by the mold that could be inhaled by humans, the EPA says.