FORKS — What started as a leak turned into a $330,000 emergency fix of the Forks extension site for Peninsula College.
When Matt Graves, the college’s director of support services, went with a crew to the site at 71 South Forks Ave. to patch a leaky roof this spring, they found major problems with the building’s support structure.
Today’s building codes require steel reinforcement of walls, Graves said, something the Forks facility was missing.
“Back then when they built that building, there wasn’t a lot of steel available,” he said.
The building is made up of two separate structures built during the late 1940s and early ’50s, Graves said.
“I would imagine that when they were built, the building codes didn’t require steel,” he said.
The buildings were later modified into one building before the college purchased it in 2000.