RIBFEST calls it quits, are other festivals next?

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Looks like $10 for 3 bones festival is over;

“The entertainment landscape has continued to expand over recent years with the opening of Denny Sanford PREMIER Center, The District and soon to be Levitt Shell,” Torkildson said. “SMG is refocusing its resources and efforts to managing and producing events in the venues it manages in Sioux Falls.”

I find it interesting that they would cancel this event right after getting a new contract to help manage Canaries Stadium. Makes you wonder what revenues are really like for SMG in Sioux Falls, or what they are seeing for projections.

I have been hearing rumors over the past couple of months that both CityFest (used to be LifeLight) and JazzFest may be on the chopping blocks also. I haven’t had anyone confirm that yet with me, but I do know that LifeLight as an organization has been liquidating some assets and Rob Joyce is retiring from the Jazz and Blues Society.

While I could give two-sh*ts about Ribfest or LifeLight, killing JazzFest would be very detrimental to summer entertainment. Even if they have to just scale back for a couple of years to one day, I think that would be better than trying to bring it back later. Obviously there is going to be a shift to have more outdoor festivals downtown at the Levitt, which is awesome, but Yankton Trails was a perfect venue for JazzFest. I was told at one time that JazzFest attendees are around 40% out of town (not sure what last year’s numbers were) but many stay for the entire event at local hotels and campgrounds. The economic impact of JF is pretty big when you consider all the city has to do is provide a city park for about a week they we already pay to maintain anyway.

Let’s hope for the best!

Mayor Huether refuses to take responsibility for flat panels on Events Center

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It’s not a lie if you don’t answer the question

When I addressed the Sioux Falls city council last night about the EC siding report, I asked who authorized putting the flat panels instead of curved panels on the EC.

At the press conference, Argus Leader reporter, Joe Sneve asked the same question of the mayor. Mayor Huether said it has already been addressed several years ago, yet still would not answer the question. Not sure ‘what’ was addressed?

The authorization would have had to be signed off by somebody, most likely the mayor or Public Works director Mark Cotter or one of the city project managers involved with the EC. Even if it wasn’t the mayor, it would have been under his directive. As I said last night, the panels didn’t just magically appear on the building.

It is pretty clear from reading the report that oil-canning of flat panels on a curved surface is causing thermal buckling due to heat which will cost the city a lot of money in maintenance replacing panels and rivets.

I also asked why the weather barrier part of study was taken out of the report and why the council can’t see the draft of a report they commissioned and taxpayers paid for.

I guess we will find out more on January 16th, hopefully.

The importance of Photo #6 (G/P – Danielson)

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A few years back I noticed a strange phenomenon when passing by the Events Center. It looked like the building was moving. As it turned out, the siding was moving, buckling in the heat of a hot summer day. This just added to my curiosity into EC construction methods. My first was during construction watching the wallboard, Tyvek and siding after heavy rains. Things just did not look right but what could I do. Now we have a consultant’s report paid for by the City Council and edited by the administration before anyone else could look at it. I am surprised the administration did not take out the few morsels we could find. Apparently the mayor did not understand what he was reading or he would have used my redacting tools I offered at City Council on January 2, 2017.

Anyone who has studied water flow issues, will find a lot to discuss when looking at photo 6.

For almost 3 years I have been asking about water flow out of the wall. The consultant’s report admitted there is a water issue behind the siding but they did not want open the walls to get a deep look. It would be hard to justify the consultant’s cost to open up the walls and then close them up at their expense. They did only receive $25,000 to tell us we have a lemon waiting to squeeze our future infrastructure budgets.

The photo given to us to study tells much, but you have top look. As someone who has tried to educate people about water flow out of this building, I noticed one thing right away, the notch cut into the base plate to let water out. About half way between the vertical studs, there appears to be a notch cut to let the water out under the blue Styrofoam so it could drain out under the siding. In our heavy rainfalls, with the spray foam applied to prevent water from embarrassingly flowing over the sidewalk, this gap allows the water to back flow into the building. Nice touch.

Consider the rust, not that there is rust in the base plate but how much is there. Look at the rust “climb” up the sides of the base plate and the rust climb as it appears on the vertical metal stud.

Now look at the interior wall side of the base plate where the Sheetrock is screwed on. Notice the rust on this side of the base plate? There never should be any there.

Consider the moisture wicking or climb, happening in the Sheetrock stain shown. I was taught many years ago to never let Sheetrock touch concrete flooring because it will wick up and ruin the wall board. If the stain is not being seen now through the interior paint it will eventually leech through, and then it will be too late.

Look at the concrete floor, do you see the stain leeching out toward the bottom of the photo? Water has been flowing quite regularly into the building.

During the presser, the consultant’s report was noted, they did not look anywhere else but where the SMG management told them to look and the closet was the only place they opened up to look.

It appears to be acknowledged the consultants did not do wall moisture visual inspection or metered testing anywhere else. They could have lifted carpet along the edges to verify if there were issues.

Did the consultants use scopes to look inside the siding? They make no mention of any attempts. Endoscopes are cheap these days and can give amazing results with photographic proof of conditions. There are holes in the siding so large a small GoPro could be dropped in so an endoscope easily could have be inserted.

Why didn’t they drill a 1/4 inch hole in the Sheetrock and put an endoscope in and look at the inside of the walls?

Since the outside temperature was close to our winter starting, there was no way to do a heat study. It is interesting the consultants did a basic job saying there is an issue with summertime heat buildup in the walls. Expansion and contraction of the steel siding is an issue to be dealt with for years to come. The Tyvek can only handle a certain temperature range. I believe we will need a monitoring system installed and then setup wall ventilatation so heat buildup does not compromise the integrity of the the minimal Tyvek water barrier installed by the CMR and specified by the architects. So my eyes were not deceiving me when I watched the walls move. The consultants confirmed my sightings as a cause for future damage potential.

To sum up photo #6 is get ready for more fun to come.

Watered Down the Siding Presser (GP-Danielson)

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First let it be said, we never found the siding on the Events Center to be unsound structurally. What we did say was the siding job was “stupid looking” or “goofy” or “ugly” or “comical“ or “unprofessional” but never unsound. Until the soffit blew off the north side on Christmas 2016, we only dreamed it could be caught by the wind and blow off. The Vikings playground in Minneapolis had many panels blow off the same day, who would have thunk?

Remember when the City Council recently decided to pay for a consultant to look at the Events Center siding? The way the administration was handling the siding problems (among other things) was creating a lack of trust with their secrecy. So a Chicago vendor was hired after another secret RFP process was put together to make the wounded citizens and Council feel better. We wonder if da mayor understood the optics of another secret RFP / RFQ? Probably not.

This led to the urgently called mayoral presser called on January 5, 2017 at the Events Center to take credit for things having nothing to do with the moisture issues we have been concerned about. He decided to remind us how we bought a building with many flaws we aren’t supposed to know about. We have witnessed issues over the past few years but he does not care. He brought along Mark Cotter to make it look legit. As Mark finished his review of the City Council’s report, the mayor decided to take a turn using his spin machine. What a waste of time. For 16 minutes we were reminded of his greatest success as mayor, spending $180 million in infrastructure money to satisfy his ego (A $10 million dollar mortgage, per year, that comes directly out of our roads fund, the 2nd penny).

The press was then able to ask questions and get less than satisfactory answers for another 30 minutes. Cameraman Bruce was there to pick up a report and attempt to ask a question

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DqubO0Lfbg&feature=youtu.be&t=25m9s

Da mayor brought back his “you’re not media crap again” when Bruce was speaking. KELO Radio’s Todd Epp decided Bruce’s question deserved an answer so he repeated it to get the speakers to answer it.

As you view the video playback, remember how little this mayor cares about the truth. Consider these questions:

• The walls have had water inside them, the rust proves it.

• There  are gaps all over the building needing to be fixed, to slow down the water flow into the walls. When will these be fixed?

• The poorly designed flashing has rivets popping. How did they manage this? The expansion and contraction of the 16 foot long panels will continue to rip the rivets out, how do we stop it?

• Why didn’t we hear about reverse flashing issues which let water into the walls and around windows?

• We did not find out about heat buildup issues caused by the poor ventilation. Oh yes, it’s Winter in South Dakota so no hot temperature to measure.

• We did find out the siding needs to be looked at every ten years but how bad will it be by then?

• We did find out the Imetco siding used cheaper butyl (oil based) caulking which melts in hot weather causing it to leak down the walls and collect dirt. Do we have a big enough pressure washer to clean it off every year?

• There is more we did not hear about because the consultants would have had to pay to remove siding to look at the Tyvek air filtration barrier being used as a water barrier. But they could have went from the backside.

• No mention was made of the lack of a water barrier like the Vikings playhouse has. As the siding moves and Tyvek breaks down, how do we know when to rip off all the siding and replace all of it?

• We did find out the siding was placed on the building according to the engineers and architects plans. This just proved MJ Dalsin did what they were instructed to do. There were no problems with their work, only with the way the Construction Manager at Risk cheapened the Events Center project with the mayor’s likely blessing? A question he has refused to answer for several years and again refused to answer yesterday.

BTW, when we will we ever see the $5,000 Judd Allen report?

UPDATE III: POSTED REPORT: Siding Report Presser – 2:30 PM TODAY (1/5/18) @ Events Center

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UPDATE III: This explains why the Mayor needed to do his presser today;

On Monday, the citizens of Sioux Falls should get some clarity on the possible political future of Mayor Mike Huether.

“Yeah, I would love to be the governor of South Dakota,” he told KSFY’s Brian Allen back in December 2016. “I’d love to be the President of the United States. I’d love to represent South Dakota as their senator or representative.”

Huether’s mayoral term ends this spring.

The mayor and his wife will announce what a city spokesperson calls their “next steps.” It will take place Monday at 11 a.m. at City Hall.

Not sure if he is running for higher office or not. I’m starting to think he will sit it out for a couple of years OR run for Governor. But if he was running for Governor I don’t think he would announce at City Hall.

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Copy of the Final Report: siding-report

I gave it a quick read. While it seems the siding itself is keeping water out, there seems to be an issue around the windows that ‘needs to be monitored’.

The biggest reveal in the report is how badly the siding was fastened to the building and that over time due to weather the siding will have to replaced in areas because of buckling. They also said that the siding should have been ‘pre-curved’ before putting on the building.

YAH THINK!!!!?

While I am happy there is no water coming in thru the siding, there are many flaws with the siding that we knew about already, and many we did not. While the best thing to do would to be replace it all, it’s still going to be costly keeping up with the maintenance since it was so badly installed. But else would you expect from Mayor Secret, Secret, Secret, RAMROD?

UPDATE II: After the press conference, you are left with more questions. Obviously we are going to have to wait until the vendor comes on Jan 16 during a CC informational to get more questions answered. Like I said above, the vendor said in the report that we should not have installed the flat siding. During the presser, Joe Sneve, asked who authorized this type of installation and the Mayor refused to answer. MMM kept trying to make it about the sold out concerts at the EC. Stehly also hammered them about the secrecy of the report itself. It was also evident the other councilors boycotted the event in protest to the way the presser was announced. The mayor told a reporter who asked about it, “I don’t think my council leadership would boycott this event or use that kind of language.” A little over 4 months left of the mayor’s fantasy world.

 

I don’t have much more information except that the Mayor’s office called the press conference about an hour ago.

This is interesting for many reasons, because NO one from city council has seen the final report or the draft report. Remember, this report was commissioned by the city council to help rebuild trust over the siding settlement fiasco, yet the administration is handling all the edits and letting the mayor’s office to see the report first and present it.

IT IS NOT HIS REPORT! IT IS THE COUNCIL’S REPORT!

If I was on city council I would be pissed and would be putting a boot up his rear end. Not sure why city councilors are so scared of a Lying Bully Coward.