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A rain storm dumped more than 12 inches in three days on the city and surrounding areas two weekends ago, flooding the Albany Park neighborhood and causing leaks in some buildings around Northeastern Illinois University’s main campus.
The Independent was able to confirm reports of minor to moderate leaks in the PE Complex, Classroom building and the Library. There was no serious flooding in any of the buildings on campus.
As previously reported by the Independent, during summer storms in 2007, some buildings on NEIU’s main campus and its satellite campus, El Centro, experienced serious flooding. University officials were forced to make repairs to several locations throughout campus as a result of the flooding.
According to Gary Bryan, Director of Maintenance and Construction, the storms in 2007 and the one a couple weekends ago affected the campus buildings differently.
“The 2007 flooding came into the buildings through the basements and was a result of the water backing up in the sewers and over saturation of the ground due to the amount of rain that fell in a short period of time.?
” …[Two weekends ago] we did not experience any significant flooding, but we had a number of roof leaks which were a result of the long period of time that it was raining, which exposed all of the weakness of the roofs and walls,” said Bryan.
Bryan says both facilities management and the university are aware of the leaks, and are in the process of addressing the problem.
“… We recently had a study done to evaluate the condition of all of the roofs.? We are following up on that report with the recommended maintenance and replacement,” said Bryan.
Yet, according to Mark Wilcockson, VP of Finance and Administration for NEIU, repairing the roofs has been a problem due to lack of funding. As a result, the university will have to prioritize and focus on areas that desperately need the repairs.
“Part of the problem is we used to get state capital funding every year, which is intended to provide money to public universities to address these types of deferred maintenance issues,” said Wilcockson. “And the last time we got capital renewal funds was fiscal year 2004. Hopefully if the state capital budgets get passed we’ll get some additional capital renewal money which is very helpful to address these kind of things.”
With limited funding, the university will have to absorb some the costs of making the repairs, something Bryan says will limit the university’s ability to fully complete the project.
“We have contracted a roofing contractor with whom we are working with, along with our consultant, to make the necessary roof repairs on each building, one at a time.? There are some roofs [that] are reaching the end of their useful life and we are attempting to find funding for replacing these roofs,” said Bryan.
Wilcockson says the university will have to deal with what funding it has to try and make as many repairs as possible until more funding comes through.
“Funding would help with doing complete roof projects. The project, the roof repairs in the PE Complex and the Library is one that we’re just going to have to use university funds. What you tend to do is make smaller repairs when an incident like this happens rather than doing a complete re-roofing project which is what some of these buildings are going to need. And that is what we’ll do if we get the capital renewal funds.”