Graham Jaehnig/Daily Mining Gazette The former church on Sharon Avenue, currently owned by Houghton County, is the subject of a recently formed Sharon Avenue and Jail Use Committee.

HOUGHTON – At Thursday’s Sharon Avenue Property Committee meeting, committee member Todd LaRoux, who is also the Houghton County Building Dept. manager, introduced a proposal to spare the former church building on Sharon Avenue.

Last October,the committee unanimously passed a motion which was sent to the Houghton County Board of Commissioners recommending the demolition of the structure.

After that decision was made, several county officials said they received negative comments from county residents on the decision.

“Going back to the unanimous vote to tear it down, I felt the pushback, too,” LaRoux said, “and I talked to some people.”

LaRoux commented on the number of older buildings in the county that have been rehabilitated and said the former church building on Sharon Ave. may be worth considering renovation.

“We owe it to the taxpayers to look at every avenue, and numbers, to decide what is the best direction to go,” LaRoux said.

He said if the county moved ahead with demolishing the building, it would have to wait for the next fiscal year to budget for the cost of the demolition.

“My concern is,” said LaRoux, “with spending money to create engineered plans for office space and whatnot, I assume that’s probably not in our budget, either.”

The question taken up by the committee is “would it cost less to demolish the building or renovate it?”

Considering the square footage of the building, LaRoux asked what would it cost to separate the worship area from the social area, which includes the kitchen, using a three-hour firewall. A three-hour firewall is a specialized, fire-resistant structural assembly designed to contain a fire in one location for a minimum of three hours, preventing its spread throughout a building.

“What would it cost to rehab that into office space and storage area, if engineers could design support walls that would support a snow load, and use the worship area for county records storage?” LaRoux asked.

Currently, the county pays $11,000 per year for offsite storage, because the courthouse does not have storage space.

“Before we actually go to demolition, I think we really need to show the taxpayers that we massaged every avenue and what makes the most sense, and that’s going to take getting an engineer involved,” LaRoux said.

He explained the installation of a firewall, is the equivalent of creating separate buildings.

“Before we put a wrecking ball to it, or are we going to go in this direction,” LaRoux said, “we owe the taxpayers that, anyway. We need to put numbers together for both directions.”

After further discussion, the committee unanimously approved rescinding its previous decision recommending the building’s demolition.

A motion was made by LaRoux, supported by committee member Tom Bingham, to recommend the County Board submit a request for proposals for an engineering study to estimate the cost of renovating the building to office and storage space. The motion passed.