Mold removal has Margate City Hall on the move

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Mold removal has Margate City Hall on the move

By MARTIN DeANGELIS Staff Writer, 609-272-7237

Published: Tuesday, December 02, 2008

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/179/story/333040.html

Press of Atlantic City - Atlantic City,NJ,USA

MARGATE - The uniform of choice around some City Hall offices is

changing this week from business casual to Ghostbusters.

Workers from a mold-removal company spent Monday preparing City

Clerk Tom Hiltner's office and a section of the nearby revenue and

finance departments for a floor-to-ceiling cleanup that will include

tearing out some walls. The project is forcing several city

employees to move to temporary work stations around the 105-year-old

building, and the contractors will soon be working in space-style

suits to protect them while they attack the mold.

Hiltner, working Monday in the second-floor City Commission office,

figures that his normal spot will be sealed up behind a plastic

shield into next month, at least. The file cabinets from his office

are now locked behind a temporary wall in the back of the town's

courtroom, which also is the commission's meeting room.

And when the current project is finished and people can move back to

their freshly de-molded offices, another group of revenue and

finance workers will spread out around the building to let the

contractors get at their area. Still Hiltner, who is also the town's

tax collector, says most residents will probably only notice that

anything's going on when the next quarterly taxes come due on Feb.

1, because the office that takes walk-in tax payments may not be

finished yet.

" But we wanted to get this done in the winter, " Hiltner

said, " because that's typically our slowest time of the year -

December, January and February. "

City Hall workers already have some experience with being moved

around by mold. The project that started Monday was the third phase

of cleaning up a problem discovered last year, during an unrelated

renovation project on the first-floor court offices.

When that was finished, the contractors moved upstairs and redid the

commissioners' offices and other areas. The work actually includes

workers taking apart and replacing some walls in affected areas of

the building, but Hiltner estimated that the whole mold-cleanup

project will end up costing the city $250,000 to $350,000.

A lot of the repair work is being done in-house, which saves on

contractors' bills, but the actual mold-removal is a job for

Remediation Specialists of Hamilton Township in Mercer County.

, a company supervisor, figured it would take a good day

and a half to prepare the new work area by draping it - and any

furniture left behind in it - with sheets of heavy, protective

plastic. After that, his crews will go to work with testing

equipment that roots out mold in spots where it may be hidden for

years by paint or wallpaper.

" Once you peel (a wall), you can be surprised at what's behind it, "

said.

But Margate officials aren't surprised any more by the fact that

they have mold in a City Hall that dates to 1903, and that

apparently suffered over the years from flooding in the streets

nearby.

" This is an old building, " said, taking a break from his prep

work for the mold project.

" And all this might look like overkill, " he added, " but it lets the

rest of the building operate while we're working. "

E-mail DeAngelis:

MDeangelis@...