By Pete Krawitz
Did you know that our building is approaching it’s 68th birthday? Did you also know that the last time we pulled a construction permit for our building was 1986? Why is this important? Well, we know that the building likely needs significant repairs in the near future. Tackling those repairs may be a lot more complicated and costly than many of us realize.
We’ve been lucky to have our handy quartermaster, Harold Rodenberger, at the helm for so many years, however, some of the inevitable facility issues we will need to address in the future will likely be even beyond his capabilities to solve. So many Seattle building codes and regulations have been introduced and changed since we last pulled permits in 1986. For example, if we do any work in the building that would require a permit, it would likely cause an expensive cascading effect that would force us to bring other aspects of the building up to code. We would soon learn that the expertise and time required to fully understand these implications was well beyond all of our capabilities.
In order to better arm our post with the knowledge to make informed decisions now and even 10 years from now, we recruited the assistance of a local design-build team: Schacht Aslani Architects and Heartland Construction. The House committee and the leadership team reviewed a proposal, which was subsequently introduced to the members and approved in August.
I believe this will be one of the most important investments that the post has made in many years. The results of this work will provide all of us with critical information that we will be able to use for many years and will hopefully help ensure the long term survival of our post in Ballard.
So now what? Over the next few months, representatives from the architect and contractors will be crawling through our building to determine the current state of our facility, researching how new zoning and permitting impacts us, and conducting interviews with a variety of members of the post to better understand how we currently use the space. By early next year, we should have the results of this work and a series of recommendations from these experts.
At this stage, we’ve had an initial kick-off meeting with the contractors and will soon be developing the final schedule of interviews and surveys. We will be providing regular updates to the post members via the monthly business meeting and the newsletter.
If you have any questions in the meantime, please reach out to [email protected] or stop by before the next business meeting on Thursday, Oct. 4 at 6:30 p.m. (the meeting starts at 7 p.m.).
Finally, it’s worth noting that the work described above is going to be the primary focus of the leadership team and house committee between now and the end of the year. This doesn’t mean I want to put all other aspects of our work and mission on hold, we just need more volunteers to assist in coordinating post events and activities now more than ever (socials, VA hospital visits, etc.). If you are interested in assisting and/or leading any of those types of events or activities, please bring it up at the next business meeting (remember, you can submit the agenda items online by visiting www.vfwseattle.org) or send me an e-mail at [email protected].