PROVO — Ground is being broken today on a new county building that will rescue the health department from its aging facility and free up county attorneys to more effectively store crime scene evidence.
The four-story Utah County Health and Justice Building will be constructed at the corner of University Avenue and 100 South — 151 S. University Ave.
Dr. Joseph Miner, executive director of the county health department, said he and his staff are thrilled.
"We moved into the building we're in after the old Elizabethan Apartments (at 100 S. 100 E.) we were in were condemned. This was a remodeled grocery/furniture store. We've never had windows, so that will be nice. And it hasn't logistically been the best."
In addition, during the past couple of years, county public works personnel have been diligently fighting to keep bats out of the rafters, said Miner. "I like to joke and say, 'When the bats show up, it's time to leave,' because the old building had bats, too, just before we left it."
The new brick and precast concrete building will have 94,560 square feet of space and house the Health Department, including environmental health, human services and the women and children agency.
There will be two auditoriums with outside entrances that will facilitate after-hours and weekend program needs much better, said Miner.
There will be a separate entrance to the immunization area and a place for people with possible contagious conditions to wait without contact with others.
In addition, the Justice Court, the Travel Council, a portion of the Utah County Sheriff's Office, the Foster Grandparents department, and the agricultural inspection office will move out of the Historic County Courthouse and into the new building.
Space will then be freed up in both the administration building and in the courthouse to reshuffle departments and make more room for the county attorney's needs and the assessor's office.
"We even ought to have a little excess space," said Commissioner Gary Herbert, "which we should because it wouldn't make sense to build a new building and have exactly what you had."
Herbert said the health department has long needed new digs because the building on South State in Provo is not only obsolete but out of the way for people who need health services.
"It was never built with the health department in mind. Each year the maintenance of that building has cost us more," Herbert said. "Plus, with just the natural growth, you need more room."
The health department will occupy approximately 80 percent of the new building when it's completed in December 2003. The old building will be sold as surplus, Herbert said.
Gillies Stransky Brems Smith is the architectural firm for the new building, and Comtrol Inc. is the general contractor.
Four stories of the building will be occupied with a one-story mechanical penthouse and a new multilevel parking structure.
Cost of construction is estimated at just over $11 million. The land cost $4 million, and folded into the bond is $2.5 million for a new county animal shelter in Spanish Fork.
"We have the ability to bond up to $21 million in lease revenue bonds for all of this," said Herbert, "at a really good low interest rate. If we only need $18 or $20 million, then that's all we'll take.
"We, I think, are fairly visionary with this. Our timing's been good. We got a great interest rate. Because of the economy and such, we're getting a good price on the construction. Plus, we can expand, and all of this with no increase in taxes."
E-MAIL: haddoc@desnews.com