Jan. 1—ROCHESTER — When a resident is given only hours to pack essentials because the building they call home is suddenly deemed structurally unsound, it strikes at the foundations of a person’s sense of security.

Six months ago,

the 180 residents of Rochester Towers Condominium were given the adrenaline-pumping order to evacuate the 55-year-old building

after severe structural problems were discovered during a window caulking project. A month later,

most of those residents were allowed to return after engineers added temporary shoring

to the building’s columns.

So do residents feel safe?

Bonnie Barnett, who lives at the condominium with her husband, Raymond, answers emphatically: Yes, she absolutely does. But she also knows that safety can be a subjective thing. A public’s perception of a structure’s safety can differ from the objective assessment of engineers. A sudden evacuation of a building can do that.

“How do you change someone’s mind?” Barnett said. “If they have a mindset that it’s not going to be safe, you are not going to change their mind, even if God declares it safe.”

Amid signs that the condos have declined in value and stories of subletting due to those perceptions, tower residents say the condo board is still seeking financing to fix and repair the building. According to a First Service Residential Minnesota document obtained by the Post Bulletin that appeared on MLS.com, a private real estate database, the building’s property manager, total repairs could cost between $12 million to $14 million.

The document states that “priority repairs” to fix three columns and the parking garage and “restore the structural components of the building” would cost $5 million to $7 million. Beyond the short-term stuff, another category of repairs “in the very near future” would need to be done on the facade, columns and window replacement. That, combined with other repairs that “should be completed within the next 3-5 years,” would cost an extra $7 million.

“Again, this is a preliminary estimate and subject to change,” the document states.

“There is a HIGH likelihood that a special assessment will need to be levied to all homeowners to help pay for said repairs,” the document states.

Residents say the problems with the 15-story building, located at 207 Fifth Ave. SW, are rooted in the tower’s construction. Citing an engineer’s report they had read, two residents say that when the building was under construction, insufficient cement was used to fortify the columns.

“They did not put enough cement around the rebar in the middle of the columns,” Barnett said. “Some cement was four inches thick. Some cement was one inch thick. I believe it’s two inches minimum you have to have around the rebar to make it stable.”

The value of the condos has taken a hit as a result of the unflattering drama surrounding the building’s structural concerns. One condo — a one bathroom, one bedroom residential unit — was listed for $150,000 on Aug. 31, 2023, but sold for less than half that at $60,000 two months later, according to real estate sources. Another condo — a two-bedroom, two-bathroom unit — was listed for $99,900 in November and sold for $80,000 in December.

The report by the property manager states that nine of the 94 units in the condo remain inhabitable due to shoring equipment in the units. And it is unknown when they will be able to return.

One resident expressed impatience that work on rehabilitating the towers hasn’t begun yet. Amy Abts says she can look out her window and still see emergency shoring holding up her neighbor’s ceiling in the uninhabited unit. Boarded-up windows pockmark parts of the building. The ground-level garage remains unusable.

“We’re six months out and repairs are supposed to be starting,” Abts said, “but I haven’t seen anything. I haven’t heard anything. There are still people that can’t live in our units.”

Building collapses are rare but not unheard of. Three people were killed in Davenport, Iowa, last May when a downtown apartment building partially collapsed. Engineers blamed construction errors made during repairs in the days before the disaster. Two years ago, 98 people died in the collapse of a Florida condominium tower. In a recent report, federal investigators isolated construction flaws on the building’s pool deck as a focus of the investigation.

Jeff Norman, manager of building plan review for the city of Rochester, said the city has set Jan. 4, 2024, as the date on which construction documents to correct the problems have to be delivered to the city. The six-month deadline from the time of the evacuation, he said, acknowledges that it takes time to prepare such documents.

“You have to determine what the issues are. You then have to prepare the documents so that the person who would bid the job clearly knows what the scope of the work is,” Norman said.

Another factor that may impact and lengthen the project’s timeline is “lead time on products.”

“That’s something that every construction company, whether residential or commercial, is having to deal with, even the city,” Norman said. The city is telling people that if you want a transformer, you’re basically looking at a one to two-year wait.”

Norman said an insurance company is requiring that the temporary shoring be inspected every 120 days. One has taken place and another inspection is planned shortly. The city receives copies of those inspections. City officials are also meeting monthly with engineers of Encompass Engineering, the firm hired to perform the inspections, “to make sure that this is not falling through the cracks.”

“The engineering firm has been good to work with. They’ve been upfront on everything. They’ve kept us apprised of where they are at in the progress,” Norman said.