The Clough building and the old Weyenberg shoe factory can be added to the list of building properties that aren't suitable for housing Columbia County offices in the future.

Members of the county's human resources and building space needs ad hoc committees said Wednesday that both properties are too small and in too poor condition.

The County Board will meet in August to decide how to proceed with addressing future county space needs. While not formally stated, acquisition of a strip mall property that formerly housed Pick 'n Save in the 1400 block of East Wisconsin Street seems to be the supervisors' top option.

A majority of the human resources committee's questions about the building space needs report Wednesday were in regards to acquiring the strip mall property.

The committee's criteria for a new location includes at least 60,000 to 80,000 square feet of space, to house about 200 employees - eliminating the need for both the county's annex on Conant Street and the county's Health and Human Services offices at 2652 Murphy Road.

The county's building needs ad hoc committee previously recommended three options to meet county office space needs through about 2030:

• Building a new, 60,000-square-foot, three-story structure on the site of the current county annex, and constructing a 230-stall, four-level parking structure.

• Building a new 60,000-square-foot, three-story structure (with an unfinished 20,000-square-foot fourth floor for storage) at the southwest corner of DeWitt and Conant streets, across the street from the courthouse, plus a new four-level, 310-stall parking structure adjacent to the building.

• Purchasing 63,000 square feet of space that now is composed of a partially occupied strip mall in the 1400 block of East Wisconsin Street (Highway 16/51) south of downtown Portage, about a mile from the courthouse, demolishing the buildings' interior and designing and building new space, adding fire-suppression sprinklers, remodeling the facade and including the option of adding about 9,210 square feet.

Rejecting sites

Portage School Board member Daniel Garrigan recommended to several County Board supervisors as well as through a letter published recently in the Daily Register that the school district's Clough building on DeWitt Street and MacFarlane Road next to Goodyear Park is the county's "best option" for addressing its future spacial needs.

The Clough building has been offered to the city of Portage for $1 and the county would be asked to acquire the Clough building and land for the same price. However, County Board supervisors said, it's the Clough's building's size and condition that turns them away, not the price.

The site is so small - approximately 34,500 square feet - that there is no room for any additional parking, let alone adequate space for what the county is looking for, said Human Resources Chairwoman Susan Martin. Martin is also a member of the county's building space needs ad hoc committee.

"It doesn't look terribly positive," Martin said of the possibility of purchasing the Clough building.

Portage's old shoe factory, not far from the Clough building on the corner of Marion and Adams streets, also has been suggested to the County Board.

"We looked at it and it is not suitable either," said Neil Ford, committee member.

The county's ad hoc committee has also dismissed the following properties from consideration for possible county spacial expansion: the Masonic Temple, the former site of the woolen mill in Portage and the Portage Clinic as well as two county-owned properties, the annex building site on Conant Street and its adjacent parking lots and the Murphy Road site of the Health and Human Service Building.

According to its report given to the County Board in June, the ad hoc committee thought it had the perfect solution when it considered the Murphy Road property. However, several factors quickly eliminated that site from consideration.

"The need for additional parking would eliminate a great deal of the available land, and the state was less than enthusiastic about our need for a second access road to the property from Highway 16. In addition, the very difficult topography of the site led a construction engineer to recommend that an open, flat site would be a more economical and practical solution," the report said.

The report says that the location of the Masonic Temple, next to the courthouse, is ideal. However, "the purchase price and the upgrades that would be necessary to bring the building to code and to retrofit the building for office space would be prohibitively expensive."

The report also states that if the Masonic Temple property was chosen, "additional property would have to be purchased to accommodate the parking necessary for the additional employees and visitors" that the county's Health and Human Services Department would bring into the area.

In regards to the old woolen mill along Mullett Street, which has been torn down, the report says that the owner/developer of the property was "most anxious for Columbia County to become its lead tenant."

The county's finance committee indicated that it is not interested in the county leasing any property. In addition, the committee's concerns about the adequacy of available parking were never answered. It appeared that additional occupied land would have to be purchased, the report said.

According to the report, the Portage Clinic on West Pleasant Street was thrown out because its location was not large enough for the county's purposes and again, parking was an issue.

Strip mall optionsThere is an open purchase option on the strip mall that a development company working with the ad hoc committee had offered for the property. The purchase option will expire at the end of August. If the supervisors decide to go ahead with the purchase, the development company would buy the property and the county would buy it from the development company for $1.2 million.

All questions regarding the acquisition of the strip mall property or any other property will be answered by Eau Claire-based engineering firm Ayers Associates at the supervisors' July 15 meeting. Ayers Associates has served as a consultant for the building space needs committee to explore options not only for the location of future county office space, but also for building design and possible funding sources.

Purchasing a property will not necessarily mean immediately constructing a new building, Martin said Wednesday. Purchasing a property is the county's first step in planning and addressing its future spacial needs.

"One luxury we have is trying to plan ahead," she said.

Human Resources Committee Vice Chairman Doug Richmond agreed.

"Maybe today is not the day to build the building, but today is the day to buy the property," he said. "It's a buyer's market now."

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