OBSERVER Photo by Damian Sebouhian: The Hanover Town Hall building will be undergoing mold abatement. The town board will be putting the project out to bid on Aug. 24.

The Hanover Town Hall building is one step closer to getting a makeover to it’s exterior walls and some of it’s interior walls as the board unanimously approved a motion during a recent meeting establishing Aug. 24 as the date to open the project up for bidding.

“There’s going to be a pre-bid meeting on Thursday, Aug. 17,” said town clerk Janine Salzman.

The reason for the project has to do with mold.

“We had a roof leak,” said Code Enforcement Officer Tom Gould. “The mastic that they used back when the building (was constructed) — the sealer and caulking — had a 25-year life span and the building is about 30 years old now.

“It gave out eventually and water leaked out into the walls; we also had some problems with water leaking from outside the building. The inside of the walls were compromised as well as the outside of the walls. The idea is to remove the brick around the three sides of the building and remediate the mold from outside the building, so we can continue to work and run our daily jobs here at the town hall.”

Gould said the insulation will be replaced and the brick will be replaced by steel-painted siding.

“It’s not a big job; not a bid deal,” Gould said. “There’s going to be a couple small rooms that are affected inside the building that have to be done from inside the building. The front of the building is all brick, so they’re going to have to seal off three small offices on the front of the building and remove the drywall from inside, remove the insulation, clean everything out.”

Gould said that the contractor hired for the project will also “be re-landscaping the outside of the building to make sure the grounds around the building slope away from the building instead of to it.

“It should take less than 10 weeks start to finish,” Gould said. “We don’t have a cost yet. We’ll see what we come up within bids, depending on prevailing wage and what’s involved, but it should not be a very big project. We’re working with the architect — Harrington Architecture out of Jamestown — to get everything drawn up, all the specs are in place and the bids will be going out and we’ll advertise it in the OBSERVER. We don’t have a set date on anything other than the presumed date for opening the bids (which) will be on Aug. 24 with the project starting very shortly thereafter.”