Town Board: Protruding Legion wall to be tested

Good news and bad news was delivered to the Town Board Tuesday about the local American Legion.

The bad news came first: A worrisome wall in the basement of Legion Hall needs an engineering analysis and may require a costly, six-digit fix. It is not considered an immediate danger to bowlers and others using the building.

The good news is that the Legionnaires are sponsoring a program to keep American flags posted along Route 114 each year from Memorial Day through July 4.

Mitchell Post Commander Mike Loriz and Highway Superintendent Mark Ketcham described the issues during the January 18 work session.

LEGION HALL WALL

Councilman Ed Brown asked about a bulging wall adjacent to the Legion bowling lanes on the east side of the building, which was recently inspected by local engineers Matt Sherman and John Cronin. Mr. Cronin’s analysis, as conveyed by Mr. Ketcham: the decades-old cement block wall has lost some of its strength to resist outside soil pressure.

This soil pressure is pushing the foundation wall slightly inward, a bulge visible in the bowling area.Legion members added a gutter to the roof above the wall several months ago to reduce rainwater entering the soil in hopes of alleviating the pressure.

That may have helped. “We can’t find out for sure what’s going on until we take the paneling off the wall,” Mr. Ketcham said. In accordance with Mr. Cronin’s recommendation, he said five strain gauges will be installed on the wall, three behind the paneling in the bowling area, one at the entry end of the room and the last in the bowling machine utility room. The gauges will be monitored seasonally for a year.

The gauges will “determine how much the wall is moving, if it’s cyclical or gradually getting worse,” Mr. Cronin said during an interview Wednesday.

The recent site visit was not Mr. Cronin’s first look at the structure. In 2003, when the building was first considered for town use, the Legion hired him to look into a number of concerns. “There was an issue flagged about the foundation,” he said.

“What’s going on there is not at all unusual,” he added. The hall was built “in a very typical way for that period of time.” Originally constructed in 1930 as a Community House, the building was taken over by the Legion in 1947. Legionnaires conveyed the property to the town in 2008 but retained perpetual rights to use of the basement.

The hall is “similar to thousands of other buildings in New York State — any building with a concrete block foundation,” Mr. Cronin said. New York State Building Code has been revised in recent years “to mitigate these problems in the future,” he added. Such a massive foundation wall could not be built of hollow-core concrete blocks today.

A foundation wall acts essentially like a dam, he said, with the soil behind it pushing on it like the water in a reservoir. Changes in water content in the soil increase and decrease the pressure on the wall. After many decades of that cycling, “The wall begins to experience some failure,” Mr. Cronin said, and that failure is seen in the bulging of the wall.

The wall at Legion Hall needs to be addressed, he said, adding, “The question is, how quickly do we need to mitigate it?”

“The wall has not moved to the point that there’s a serious loss of structural stability, but the extent of the problem does need to be measured,” he said.

“As a registered engineer, I don’t see anything there that would make me say, ‘Oh boy, we can’t be using this building.’”

If the wall needs to be rebuilt, the project could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, Mr. Ketcham told the board. To cover the potential costs, “We should start making plans now, put money aside, go to the grant writers,” he added.

Councilman Peter Reich, a building contractor, suggested that in addition to an engineering analysis, masons with “practical know-how” should have a look at the wall. External support systems may be enough to keep the wall in place, he suggested.

AMERICAN FLAG PROJECT

During the procession and memorial services for fallen serviceman Lt. Joseph Theinert last June, American flags donated by Shelter Island Hardware were installed on every third utility pole along Route 114.

“After the services, people commented how good the Island looked with flags lining the streets in that way,” Mr. Loriz said Tuesday. Dave Gurney of Shelter Island Hardware has been working since then to make it happen every year.

Mr. Loriz and Mr. Gurney consulted with Southold officials in charge of a similar volunteer flag program in that town to learn about the costs and pitfalls, Mr. Loriz explained.

With a blessing from the Town Board on Tuesday, the Legion and Shelter Island Hardware  are launching a Shelter Island flag program this week.

The Legion will act as sponsor for program, Mr. Loriz said, and Shelter Island Hardware will procure heavy-duty cast aluminum brackets and non-furling flag poles at cost. Local citizens are asked to contribute to the program to cover the cost — $35 for each flag, pole and bracket. Mr. Gurney and his sister Meredith Page will be donating an initial 20 flag sets.

The flags would be on display from Memorial Day through July 4 each year, with a flag on every two or three poles. The first flags would be installed where Route 114 passes through the town Center. The total number of flags will depend on the donations as well as a maintenance plan — there are over 200 poles from ferry to ferry and each new flag is expected to last two years, Mr. Loriz said.

Mr. Ketcham said that his crews would be able to install and take down the flags. The Legion would store the flags and maintain them, Mr. Loriz said.

Mr. Reich asked if the installation was authorized by the pole owners — Verizon and LIPA. Mr. Loriz said that based on Southold’s experience, “LIPA would be loath to say they didn’t want American flags on their poles.”

Donations to the flag program should be sent to American Legion Mitchell Post 281, P.O. Box 2021, Shelter Island, NY 11964.