HENDERSON, Ky. — Henderson Municipal Power & Light on Tuesday briefed the Henderson City Commission on its plan to rebuild its campus near Downtown Henderson.
HMP&L General Manager Chris Heimgartner said the plan, approved unanimously Oct. 28 by the Henderson Utility Commission, is intended to make the city-owned electric utility more efficient while making its 3.5-acre site at Fifth and Water streets more attractive to neighbors and the community at large.
The aging complex includes a building used by the HMP&L Transmission and Distribution Department that was built before 1913 for a bottling plant and converted to a concrete block factory decades later. Heimgartner said the building doesn’t meet basic workplace standards. Over the years HMP&L has acquired buildings designed for other industries and repurposed them due to their location.
The headquarters building is newer, but is energy inefficient, and its concrete floor is riddled with cracks, some of them one-inch wide. At least a portion of the roof needs to be replaced along with the entire HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) system. Making repairs would cost nearly as much as constructing the planned new two-story headquarters, which for the first time would place the entire HMP&L staff (except for a vehicle mechanic) in a single building.
“This has been put off for a long time,” according to Heimgartner. “We probably should have replaced the Transmission and Distribution building in the 1970s.”
HMP&L’s plans call for demolishing all existing buildings — including a pair of buildings on North Main Street that were built in the ’40s or ’50s to house an automobile dealership but now is home to its fiber optic communications network — and constructing new structures specifically designed for use by an electric utility. HMP&L staff will secure temporary quarters elsewhere during the construction phase.
Other plans call for extending a decorative brick-and-steel rail fence around much of the site, incorporating more landscaping along its boundaries and adding a walking path between North Main and Water streets along what was once a block of Fourth Street.
Additionally, plans call for storing wire reels and most transformers beneath roofed spaces instead of in the current open yard.
HMP&L owns the entire block bounded by Water, Fifth, North Main streets and Fourth streets, except for two parcels at Fifth and Main streets. “All the changes will make this much more attractive,” he said.
HMP&L did explore leaving its current site altogether, but other proposed locations proved to be either too small; environmentally challenged; or outside the HMP&L service territory. The current block has historically been used for industrial purposes that have included a brewery, ice house, cooperages and a tobacco stemmery, with a former 1950s-era coal-fired power plant across the street. The property lies between a railroad trestle and the city water treatment plant.
The cost of the rebuild is estimated at approximately $13.5 million. Heimgartner said the project won’t require HMP&L taking on additional debt, although a pair of CPI rate increases estimated at 2 percent already planned for the next decade will be moved up to mid-2021 and mid-2023, respectively. Even so, he said HMP&L’s rates will remain drastically lower than those of other electric utilities in the region.
While architectural design work is in its preliminary stages, Heimgartner said groundbreaking could begin in mid-2020 or the spring of 2021. Design input will be sought from neighbors and the Downtown Henderson Partnership.
HMP&L has set up an email address — HmplRebuild@hmpl.net — that the community can use to offer comments, suggestions or questions.
HMP&L, established in 1896, is the city-owned electric utility for the City of Henderson and serves most city residents, businesses and industries. It also offers a high-speed fiber-optic commercial telecommunication service.
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