By QUINTON SMITH/Lincoln Chronicle
NEWPORT – Central Lincoln People’s Utility District has signed contracts to design and construct a new $26.5 million headquarters building adjacent to its current office along U.S. Highway 101.
Recent decisions by the utility’s board to award architect, engineering and construction manager/general contractor contracts ends a nearly nine-year process to replace its 44-year-old headquarters.
The utility will pay for its new headquarters and several other capital projects by issuing $35 million in bonds, and expects it will require a 1 percent increase in electricity rates to finance. The utility expects to begin the bond sale process near the end of this year.
Central Lincoln is a public utility district that runs through four coastal counties from Lincoln Beach in the north to North Bend in the south. It has 35,940 residential, 5,415 commercial and 206 industrial meters and buys its electricity from the Bonneville Power Administration. Central Lincoln has 132 employees, with 50 of those in its headquarters along Highway 101 in Newport. It also has offices in Florence and Reedsport.
It completed the construction of a $30 million operations center on the north edge of the city in 2017 as part of a plan to modernize its maintenance facilities and move them out of the tsunami zone. The headquarters building is already out of the tsunami zone at 145 feet above sea level.
The headquarters building opened in 1981 and was designed to be a passive solar structure that would lower the utility’s own energy costs and be an example for other commercial energy efficient construction. But the system really didn’t work well “from the start,” said Eric Chambers, Central Lincoln’s customer and community services director, and CLPUD eventually had to install a traditional heating and cooling system.
The headquarters building’s open design also had inefficient work areas that also proved noisy for employees, said senior project engineer Gail Malcolm. And, as critical institutions began worrying more about earthquake resilience, she said engineers believe it would shake apart in a major earthquake.
Central Lincoln considered remodeling the current headquarters but that was deemed too complicated, Malcolm said. It put the building up for sale for about a year but had no takers.
Central Lincoln also considered moving headquarters staff to the operations center north of Newport, Malcolm said, but it was harder to access and not customer friendly.
So, the CLPUD board and staff began looking at constructing a new headquarters on its 5-acre site, much of which is parking or unused gravel areas. It surveyed employees on what they thought a new office needed, refined all ideas and put out a request for proposals from architectural and construction companies.
The board selected GLAS Architects of Eugene to do its design and then awarded a management/construction contract to Lease Crutcher Lewis, which has offices in Eugene and Portland. Both had worked on CLPUD’s north operations center, have done projects for the Lincoln County School District and both are working Oregon Coast Community College’s new trades education center.
The new CLPUD headquarters will be 27,500 square feet and wood-framed and slightly smaller than the current offices. The utility’s headquarters staff is stable, Malcolm said, so they don’t need more space just more efficient space.
Malcolm expects the first dirt will be moved this fall, taking out a rise in the headquarters’ property so that foundation work can begin. In all, she expects construction to last 1½ years.
Once finished, the current headquarters will be demolished.
Chambers said CLPUD expects to sell $35 million in bonds, enough for the new headquarters and to help pay for other capital projects. Bonds will be paid off over 30 years with proceeds from the 1 percent rate increase. The average residential cost per kilowatt hour is $116 a month, he said, and will rise about $1 a month to pay off the bonds.
Because CLPUD’s average monthly residential cost per kilowatt hour are so much lower than others on the coast — $167 for PacifiCorp, $139 for Consumers Power Inc. and $122 for Tillamook PUD – Central Lincoln is not anticipating much reaction to the increase.
- Quinton Smith is the editor of Lincoln Chronicle and can be reached at YachatsNews@gmail.com
