Great Falls Civic Center

Civic Center concrete panels are deteriorating, upgrades needed. (Great Falls Tribune, 7/25/2011)

Excerpt: The Great Falls Civic Center, the city government headquarters, has concrete panels that are beginning to crack and may require a $4 million fix, City Manager Greg Doyon said last week.

A springtime report by Great Falls architect Marv Hessler said deterioration of the building, constructed through a federal Works Progress Administration grant more than 70 years ago, "is expected to continue."

"They're not salvageable over the long term," Hessler said Friday of the building's concrete panels. He said the building "looks great" from a distance, but a closer look makes the problems apparent.

Doyon raised the issued while discussing city budget concerns. He added that he plans to schedule an upcoming work session discussion of the building's problems.

Construction of the Civic Center began in 1939, under the Works Progress Administration as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's "New Deal." City offices in the building opened in March 1940.

Hessler said the construction project unfortunately used calcium chloride to help the mostly concrete structure cure more quickly. The concrete gained its strength faster as a result, but over the years the calcium chloride caused steel reinforcing bars called rebar to deteriorate and rust.

"Basically, the panels were kind of born dead," Hessler said. In the 1950s, experts figured out that calcium chloride can damage rebar, but it was too late to do anything about the Civic Center's panels.