New public works brings 2 under same roof

With all of the public works staff now under the same roof, the new facility for Steele County is fully functional.
On Friday, Aug. 16, the Steele County Highway Department began moving into the facility, completing that move on Monday, Aug. 19.
The new facility, located at 3000 Hoffman Dr. NW in Owatonna houses the entirety of the county’s public works department and boasts enough room for maintenance and engineering staff to be housed under one roof, in addition to salt and cold storage, as well as improved space for equipment.
Totaling approximately 37,000 square feet, the new building carried a price tag of $10,752,000. The county received monetary assistance from a $1.6 million FEMA grant and $4 million from the State Department of Employment and Economic Development. This lowered the total cost for the county by $5.6 million and allowed the new building to be constructed with a smaller budget.
After issues with flooding caused maintenance staff to move to a rented space for roughly $15,000 a month, county officials found the new facility was sorely needed. During this time, engineering staff was also operating out of the County Annex building.
“We’re in the process of bringing all of our files over,” County Engineer Greg Ilkka explained of the ongoing move. Ilkka and his staff are still settling into the new building as furniture and other additions are in the process of being moved in.
While maintenance has been operating out of the building since April, the engineering staff waited until the blacktop was complete on Friday, August 16 before making its move. “I didn’t want to open up for public business here until we at least had that done,” Ilkka explained. There is still some landscaping to be done around the building.
“We love it, it’s new compared to what we were in,” Ilkka said of the new facility. “Like everything, because the board had a budget to work with, it’s not perfect but that’s certainly not a problem. We’re going to adapt and overcome any small issues we come across.”
One of the biggest upsides is having all of the staff under the same roof. “That’s probably the best part,” Ilkka said. “Already just this week the ability of us to even just yell down the hall so that we’re not running back in forth.” The facility currently houses 22 full-time employees in both departments.
“I think if you talk to any one of the maintenance staff, they’re more than pleased with the facility they have now,” he said. “Most of that was a consequence of the fact that the building they leased was not meant to be a highway department so there was a lot of things to overcome.”
The county brought on Al Forsberg as building construction project manager in order to make certain that the building would be the perfect fit for them. “It has a 75-year lifespan,” Forsberg explained last April. “It meets the state energy requirements and is a very energy efficient building. The old building was not adequate for the current size of equipment and didn’t meet healthy ADA requirements.”
Despite the shuffle to a new building, the county still had nine projects over the course of the whole summer and currently have five active projects. Now finally operating out of the new facility, Steele County Public Works will continue to push through the remaining projects as the summer season winds down. There will be an open house for the public to see the new building later this year.