Institutions Committee reviews capital requests for state office roofs, UPS upgrades and parking garage

At an Institutions Committee meeting Feb. 4, Joe Aja, director for design and construction at Building General Services (BGS), outlined capital needs across multiple state facilities, including roof replacements at the Middlesex State Archives and the Waterbury State Office Complex, upgrades to uninterruptible power supplies for the state's print and postal operations, and additional funding for the 32 Cherry Street parking garage.

The requests matter because the Middlesex building stores long-term state records, failing roofs threaten those records and equipment, brittle slate on Waterbury roofs has become a public-safety hazard, and the courthouse above 32 Cherry Street must remain in operation while construction proceeds.

Aja said the Middlesex State Archives complex was built in three phases (1989, 1990 and 2008) and that the records storage area has an interior height of roughly 45 feet. "So we're looking for a million dollars for this in FY '7 with the design of the roof," Aja said, adding that the lower copper roof and the upper membrane roof both need work. He warned that snow sliding from the copper roof is an operational concern at the site.

Aja told the committee the printing and postal operations beneath the Middlesex copper roof house machines valued at more than $500,000 apiece, and that some machines are supported by uninterruptible power supplies (UPS). He said the department began a renovation that left $58,000 appropriated to the project and that it needs additional funding to connect the remaining equipment to UPS so the systems can ride through outages.

On the Waterbury State Office Complex, Aja said the slate roofing is at end of life and brittle; maintenance crews routinely collect fallen slate from grounds. "The slate is end of life. It's very brittle," he said. BGS has advertised a bid to replace slate on four buildings (identified as buildings B, C, D and F) and is requesting additional funding of $2,000,000 in each of 2026 and 2027 (a $4,000,000 request spanning those two years) to begin that work. He said the department currently estimates about $22,000,000 would be required to replace all the roofs across the complex.

The committee also heard about work at 32 Cherry Street, where the courthouse sits above a parking garage. Aja said design development is underway, a construction manager is on board, and the project will proceed in phases so court operations can continue: "We're gonna be doing one section of the parking garage at a time," he said. He confirmed the department is seeking an additional $2,000,000 to carry the project through its current phase.

During the presentation, Aja and committee members identified and corrected arithmetic and accounting errors in the slide packet. Aja acknowledged a math error in the cash-fund balances and provided corrected figures on the record: the planning/reuse/contingency cash balance was stated as $1,075,000, and the department was asking for an additional $250,000 for fiscal years 2026–27 for that line; an earlier reported expenditure of about $1,500,000 was clarified to be approximately $156,000. Committee members asked clarifying questions about totals and whether available appropriations would cover the immediate work; Aja said staff would verify and return with corrected figures as the projects proceed.

No formal motions or votes were recorded on these project requests during the portion of the meeting reflected in the transcript. Staff described the Waterbury slate replacement as currently out to bid and said the parking-garage work is in the design-development and coordination phase.

Committee members indicated they expect to review these projects in more detail as BGS provides updated budgets and corrected accounting figures.