U’s buildings have lots of leaks and not enough cash

Greg Williams is at war with water. And he is losing.
Over the years, it has eaten large holes in a steel rain roof that protects the underground laboratories in the University of Minnesota’s Civil Engineering Building, which Williams oversees as a district manager.
The rain roof has a total of 115 holes — some stretching up to 3 feet — that cause leaks and mold. Fixing all the holes would cost $6 million.
“It’s definitely in the works. It just needs to get funded,” Williams said.
The Civil Engineering Building is one of 191 buildings scattered across the Twin Cities campus, many of which have their own maintenance issues.
The University has about $160 million in annual maintenance and renewal needs, but it currently only receives $90 million in funding.
Over the next 10 years, the University anticipates its infrastructure will need $2.3 billion for repairs — about one-third of the total value of campus buildings.
The University has dealt with the funding gap in a variety of ways, including demolishing old buildings, finding new uses for aging ones and prioritizing maintenance projects. It’s also seeking $35 million from the Legislature in Higher Education Asset Preservation and Replacement funding to help tackle the backlog of projects.
But short of a cash windfall from the state or private fundraising, the University’s building maintenance is likely to continue operating at a deficit.
In the interim, building managers like Williams work to apply “Band-Aid” fixes to keep buildings operating.
In the Civil Engineering Building, that means putting metal trays over the holes to collect water.
“Water is insidious,” Williams said. “[It] wants to dissolve this thing like a tablet of Aspirin. Just wash it away.”
Faculty and students have been shuffled around the building while maintenance workers battle mold and new leaks, impeding their work and research.
“One student had a notepad laying on a desk and the water dripped on it for a week,” Williams said. “When he came back there was a hole in it.”
Buildings ‘limp along’
On a campus spanning nearly 24 million square feet where the average building is 54 years old, there’s a steady stream of maintenance issues.
On any given day, Williams said his crews are repairing doors, fixing handicap buttons, replacing lights and monitoring building systems.
As buildings age, roofs eventually must be replaced, bricks relaid and the heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems updated, said Mike Berthelsen, associate vice president for Facilities Management. The University monitors the condition of its buildings using a facilities index, which measures the value of buildings against their ongoing maintenance needs and guides where repair dollars are best used.
Excluding the 31 buildings that were built or renovated in the last decade, which have minimal maintenance needs, repairs will cost $2.1 billion over 10 years –– nearly half of the buildings’ replacement value.
Leaky roofs and other major problems are prioritized highly and generally receive funding quickly, Berthelsen said.
“If there’s water infiltration … and we don’t address it, then it could exasperate mold issues or damage the building interior,” he said. “Then you’re not just fixing the leak. Now you’re replacing carpet and replacing sheet rock.”
A tight budget means other, less pressing projects, like painting classrooms, replacing carpets or installing new windows are delayed, and buildings “limp along,” Berthelsen said.
“We need to make sure it’s safe and functional, but if the windows are leaking, it’s not stopping us from doing what we need,” he said.
One example of a delayed project is at the 76-year-old Nolte Center, which doesn’t have an integrated fire alarm system.
“If there’s a fire in that building, the only way we know is if we walk over to it and see smoke coming out the window,” Williams said.
The building, with a replacement cost valued at about $7 million, will require approximately $9 million in repairs and maintenance over the next 10 years. But fixing the fire system would force the University to address a host of other repairs in the building.
“The problem is you go to put in a fire system and now you have to bring it up to code with a sprinkler system,” he said. “At the same time you’re replumbing for the sprinkler system, you might as well update the plumbing and work on the supply fans.”
Funding also lags for the more than 300 general-use classrooms, which get about 40 percent of the $7 million needed to regularly renew building furnishings and repair projection and audio systems.
“As our funding is cut, it doesn’t allow us to maintain [classrooms] as frequently,” Classroom Support Manager Toni Pangborn said. “It ends up degrading the quality … of the teaching environment.”
A deteriorating infrastructure can affect campus life and hurt schools as they compete to attract top students and faculty, said Harvey Kaiser, a higher education consultant and former building officer at Syracuse University.
System failures can threaten research or displace classes, and peeling paint, windows that don’t close and broken doors all affect a campus’ image, he said.
“If nobody cares about what the place looks like, this whole business of teaching and learning appears secondary,” he said.
Demolish, renovate, build
With increased funding, Facilities Management could take a broader approach to maintaining the campus, Berthelsen said.
“We might be able to get to that carpet a little faster. We might be able to update or redo something a little faster,” he said. “We would be able to be more general about updating all single-pane windows, where as now we’re targeting which ones are most important based on … how bad they are.”
Outside of prioritizing projects, the University has undertaken an aggressive campaign of demolishing and decommissioning buildings whose maintenance needs outstrip their value. Wesbrook Hall, one of the 20 worst buildings according to the facilities index, is slated to be demolished this summer, along with the Veterinary Anatomy Building on the St. Paul Campus.
The University has also invested heavily in major renovation and renewal projects in buildings. A $35 million renovation of the 104-year-old Folwell Hall and an $80 million renovation of Northrop Auditorium, both financed in part by state HEAPR dollars, are currently underway.
Since 2001, the University has done extensive renovations on 16 buildings, eight of which were built before 1950, including Nicholson Hall, Jones Hall and Walter Library. Over that same time period, 15 new buildings have been built on campus.
A new $77 million physics and nanotechnology building is in the works, and if funded by the state, the new building would allow the University to “repurpose” the current physics building for classrooms and offices, lowering maintenance costs.
Berthelsen said new buildings are the best option in some situations, but his office focuses on extending the buildings’ life-spans for as long as possible through maintenance and prioritized repairs.
“We want to use as few buildings as possible to make sure we’re spending money on things like teaching,” he said. “We need enough facilities to do our mission, but let’s not overdo it.”
Funding the need
Universities across the country struggle with similar gaps in maintenance funding, with an estimated $40 billion in deferred maintenance across campuses nationwide, according to Lander Medlin, executive vice president of APPA, a higher education building professionals association.
“It’s not a blame on these institutions,” Medlin said. “They all have a certain amount of revenue and they’re all trying to balance those needs.”
Deferred maintenance accounts for only part of the University’s $2.3 billion estimate for future repairs.
About a third of the school’s maintenance budget comes from HEAPR funds with the rest from general state appropriations, tuition, debt, fundraising and revenue generated by building operations.
Kaiser said raising money from private donors can be difficult for typical repair and renewal projects.
“You’ll get somebody to stand around a building’s ribbon cutting,” he said. “But not for repairing a toilet that’s broken.”
Kaiser said schools can package general repairs in larger capital projects that include full-scale renovations or new buildings to help attract donors.
Other states have passed multi-billion dollar referendums to wipe out maintenance backlogs on campuses and some universities, like the University of Michigan, have turned to student fees to help close the gap, Kaiser said.
Gov. Mark Dayton has proposed a $1 billion bonding bill this year that would allocate $100 million to the University. The bill would provide funding for the physics and nanotechnology building, as well as $35 million in HEAPR funds.
Those funds would be put toward repairing leaky roofs and updating elevator systems across campus.
The Legislature doesn’t usually pass bonding bills in odd years, and the state faces a $5 billion budget deficit. It’s unclear whether this year will be an exception.
Sen. Sandra Pappas, DFL-St. Paul, said now is an ideal time to get caught up on HEAPR, especially because the repair and renewal work would generate jobs.
Pappas said it will take several funding cycles to make progress on the University’s maintenance backlog, and the state must balance its funding between new buildings and repairs.
“If we don’t do a HEAPR bill this year and then we don’t do much next year,” she said, “eventually we will be too far behind.”