Mayor Lundgren discusses clinic, railway solution in Vergas

"Energy Resiliency

Daniel Handeen, a Research Fellow at the Center for Sustainable Building Research in the College of Design at the University of Minnesota, gave the council a municipal building assessment and benchmarking report on city-owned buildings with the Event Center standing out as a possible means of saving money with insulation improvements and solar panels on the roof.

“As far as the complexity of the work it’s pretty straightforward,” Handeen said. 

An estimate for perimeter insulation came in at $8,000.

The solar project was ruled a low investment and not discussed further.

The Event Center, originally built as a school in 1953, has heating registers running underneath the insulated wall portion. The registers are run right underneath the concrete slab and it can be seen that heat is conducting through the edge of the slab. Heat is conducting through the ground and the slab and being lost. The proposal is to add insulation around the perimeter of the slab. The fire hall has something similar, an aggregate insulation board that runs around the edge of the building." (frazeevergas, 3/18/25)