Fairbanks, Alaska, to reconsider recycling center

The Fairbanks (Alaska) Daily News Miner reports officials are finding the cost of remodeling a Well Street liquor distribution warehouse into a community recycling center to be more expensive than initially thought.

“I am having trouble being fiscally responsible and saying we should buy this building,” Fairbanks North Star Borough Mayor Karl Kassel told the Borough Assembly at a committee meeting Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2016, the newspaper reports.

Officials offered to purchase the building for $400,000, believing the cost to remodel would be minor. Kassel, who sponsored an ordinance for assembly approval to purchase the site, no longer wishes to purchase the building as the higher than expected cost would draw down the municipality’s savings account, the article says.

“It’s a huge building,” he told the newspaper. “This isn’t a necessarily a bad deal for somebody else who has the money. We don’t have the money to accomplish this.”

The building requires structural repairs, a new roof, electrical and weatherproofing upgrades and a new boiler. Anchorage-based PDC Engineers Inc. estimated the cost would be about $5.6 million, according to the article.