The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
By Mark Reaman
If the Crested Butte town hall building looks a little shiner, a little more polished these days, there’s a good reason. A mostly two-person masonry crew that has been working all summer is finishing up restoration work on the outside façade that started last spring.
A&M Restorations was the general contractor and administered the work specific to window rehabilitation. The remainder of the project, done by Agave Landscapes and Masonry included a full exterior brick masonry restoration, repair and replacement of the exterior parge coat.
A parge coat is a thin, smooth coat of cement or mortar applied to masonry or concrete walls for protection, to seal imperfections like holes and cracks, and to provide a uniform surface for painting or other finishes. It enhances the overall building performance by providing insulation, reducing air and water leakage and improving the wall’s acoustic qualities. The town hall building was built using brick.
Crested Butte senior planner Jessie Earley said the work not only enhances the look of the 98-year-old building that at one time was the Crested Butte Community School, but it also upgrades climate performance by making it tighter. “There were two windows on the south side of the building in the second-floor stairwells that were replaced and four windows on the second floor of the north elevation that had previously been boarded up with spray foam,” she said. “This work is the first step to help make the building a lot tighter.”
This first phase of the work began in late May and was completed last week. Earley said the town received a State Historic Fund (SHF) grant to help complete Phase 1 of work to Town Hall. “This is after receiving a grant in 2021 to complete a historic structure assessment and a grant in 2022 for Construction Documents,” she explained. “Phase 1 of the project totaled $309,498. The grant award was $232,123 and the cash match from the town was $77,375.”
Earley said she will be applying for another grant to the SHF in October to replace the remaining 48 windows on the primary module of the building (north and south) “with more historically accurate white divided light double hung windows. We also received a grant from Colorado’s Department of Local Affair’s Energy/Mineral Impact Assistance Fund program to develop plans for the Marshal’s addition and address drainage issues within Crank’s Plaza. That is another item that is needed to help better maintain the town hall building. It is not just about aesthetics. All of these things will make the town hall campus more efficient and save money over the long-haul for the community.”
