Honeywell audit recommends roughly $12.5 million in upgrades for Grand Island facilities; ice-rink revival offered as optional $2M project

Honeywell International told the Grand Island City Council on Sept. 30 that an investment-grade audit of four municipal buildings recommends about $12,500,000 in combined projects, with alternative “priority” packages that would cost about $10.6 million and $8.6 million depending on whether the Heartland Event Center ice-rink work is included.

The recommendation matters because it groups energy-efficiency, operational reliability and capital-repair work into a single financing proposal that Honeywell says could be paid in part from guaranteed energy and operational savings and by financing; the city also heard that a state grant program could cover up to $1,125,000 of an ice-rink conversion, if council pursues that option.

Honeywell presenters said the audit covered City Hall, the Heartland Event Center, the Law Enforcement Center and the public library. Jordan, Honeywell’s local account executive, told council, "All of the projects we've looked at for you are totaling to a budget of about $12,500,000." Don Borgman, Honeywell’s solution development engineer, summarized the firm’s approach: "we do what we call a line by line audit." The report included detailed retrofit suggestions and three funding scenarios for council consideration.

What Honeywell recommended

- Heartland Event Center: The largest scope of work is at the Heartland Event Center and includes two separate lighting projects (concourse/administrative lighting and a separate arena light replacement), replacement or refurbishment of boilers, roof recoating, mechanical insulation, building-controls replacement, sound-system upgrades and an optional ice-rink revival. Honeywell estimated concourse/fixture LED upgrades at about $700,000 with roughly $23,000 a year in energy savings and additional operational savings from lower maintenance. The firm said arena LED fixtures would increase measured on-floor light from about 41 foot-candles to about 100 foot-candles and improve uniformity (from roughly a 6.5:1 contrast ratio to under 2:1) while reducing energy demand.

- Boilers and HVAC: At the Heartland Event Center Honeywell found only two of the original five boilers in service and recommended removing three nonfunctional units and installing three high-efficiency replacements to restore designed redundancy. Council members pressed on timing for that work; Honeywell said a…