Since I am Columbia County's building and grounds director, I want to weigh in on the discussion regarding Daniel Garrigan's suggestion that the county purchase the old Clough school building and renovate it to meet the county's future space needs.

Personally, I love old buildings, and appreciate them for their character and unique design features. The Clough building, however, would not meet the county's needs.

The building, at 34,500 square feet, is substantially smaller than the 60,000 square feet that the county needs. The limited size of the property on which the building sits does not allow for any expansion, nor for additional parking spaces. City ordinance requires that even a 34,500-square-foot office building have a minimum of 115 stalls.

An article in the Daily Register on Dec. 5, 2008, stated, "The cost for the district to remodel the existing usable space at Clough - bringing it up to safety codes - was estimated at $1.4 million from a 2007 facility study done by Plunkett Rayish Architects."

That's $1.4 million just to bring the portion of the building being used, slightly over half of the building's total space, up to code. That figure is misleading since it does not consider the cost of bringing the entire building into compliance, nor does it consider the much greater cost of converting classrooms into efficient office space.

You get what you pay for. In the case of the Clough building, the county would be getting half of the space necessary at an unknown cost of renovation with no room for future expansion or adequate parking.

Efficiencies on operations, convenient public accessibility and operating cost reductions in the long term can best be met by consolidating the majority of our operations into one building and on one floor to meet Americans With Disabilities Act requirements.

Cory J. Wiegel, Portage