Mount Prospect believes it has solved water issues at new fire headquarters
Mount Prospect officials hope that water seepage problems that plagued the MB Financial building at 111. E. Rand Road have been solved now that the building has been converted into the village's new fire headquarters.
The village had to perform significant flood prevention work on the building, which the fire department moved into on April 15. As a result, the village board on Tuesday approved a change order of up to $124,200 for the additional work, which will push to project's total cost to about $10.5 million.
"When we acquired this property for our fire headquarters, in our walk-throughs we saw water problems in the lower level of this building," Village Manager Michael Cassady said.
"We really didn't get significant rainfall to test the system until after the project was nearly completed.
Among the problems was the extreme depth of the building's lower level and height of the water table, he said. The best fix, he said, was an interior drain tile system.
"The good news is the new system was operational on that last storm a couple of Sundays ago and it handled the storm exceptionally well," Cassady added.
Trustee Paul Hoefert confirmed with Cassady that there is no way to go back to the former owner to recoup the additional costs.
"So it is what it is, and obviously we couldn't inhabit the building without fixing this problem," he said.