On Thursday, April 1, the Guilford County Board of Commissioners is expected to put nearly $100,000 of new taxpayer money into repairs for a building that’s been a notorious money pit for well over a decade.
The price keeps going up on Guilford County’s building at 325 E. Russell Ave. in High Point – now known as the Langford Building. Guilford County purchased the building in 2008 to house its social services operations in High Point as well as other county functions.
In 1994, the building, which was built in 1916, sold for $40,000 as part of a bankruptcy sale. However, when Guilford County purchased it 14 years later, the county paid the astonishing price of $8.14 million.
And that was just the start of the cost to the county’s taxpayers. Over the last 12 years, Guilford County has pumped money into the Langford Building, which has had problems with leaks, asbestos, a faulty roof, ants, rodents, underground contamination, acoustic issues and more.
In the most recent round of spending on the building, the county has been paying to repair brick and mortar walls needed to alleviate flooding in the building’s lower levels. The Guilford County Board of Commissioners had approved a contract with Frank L. Blum Construction for about $907,000 for the repair of that building as well as some work on the county’s courthouse in downtown High Point.
While the work was being done on the Langford Building, however, more issues were discovered, and now the county is amending that project and adding $96,262, which will raise the cost of the current work to over $1 million.
According to the contract amendment, several new problems were discovered. For instance, “As the demolition was proceeding at the southeast corner of the Langford Building, for individual brick replacement, it was noted that the infill brick at that location (both floors) was not adequately secured to the building structure and there was not a moisture barrier present.”
Prime example of what money & power does in today’s society! Those that know the history with this place also know the FBI should have been called in to lock up Arnold & Fox over the whole deal. The taxpayers have a never ending money pit as a lasting souvenir of this fiasco. Thanks a lot! Is it just fornication or is it rape when the government forces it on the taxpayers and leaves them with decades of lasting problems? It was definitely not consensual. A crook is a crook, I don’t care if they’re elected, appointed, or anointed, they’re still a crook.
Guilford County needs to quit throwing away money in High Point. Greensboro is the County Seat. Duplication of buildings, etc. in High Point is unnecessary and costly and only because High Point feels it should be equal to Greensboro and “part” county seat.
You wouldn’t say that if it was your family members who needed access to services. Equal rights for everyone!!
COUNTY Building. Throwing good money after bad. Sound familiar?
If it were private money, the buyer would have done due diligence.
The only way I know to put a stop this stuff is to stop giving them money. Any suggestions on that one?
Did the county perform any due diligence on this building before it was built? Did they have an engineer provide a full inspection and evaluation? Who was the appraiser that put this kind of price on such a problem. It certainly does not seem that the county performed even the most basic of investigation prior to purchase. Who would buy a building that is over 100 years old and not perform these types of inspections? I guess it does not matter since any costs are always paid by the tax payer. Something is very remiss about this entire issue. Someone needs to look into these types of costly mistakes. Does the county have any type of “audit” department that can review such instances?
Again, why bother, just pass it on to us taxpayers, we have no control of mistakes made by incompetent county employees, administrators or elected officials.
This wasn’t incompetent staff, and there was no mistake, it was a deal between crooked administrator & crooked politicians who were apparently untouchables.
Sounds right. What are your sources.
It was a deal between Brenda Jones-Fox & Steve Arnold and they got enough of the rest of the board to go along with it. The poor director in the Facilities Department had no choice but to follow his boss’ orders if had had any hope of retiring. Plenty of job security working on this train wreck of a building. Just about anyone who was working for the County at the time will concurr. These were the good old days when the board was under control of Democrats & if I’m not mistaken you know who was their chairman. This wasn’t far from the same time there was a push from the same folks to use a certain bank for bonds to buy the BB&T building when other banks were offering significantly better rates. I’m sure all of this is still in the ‘ol Rhino Times Archives. They covered it all quite extensively at the time. Like I’ve said many times before, a crook is a crook, it makes no difference if they’re hired, appointed, elected, or anointed.
Why is this building still being used? I thought everything hadvmoved to Greensboro. The phone numbers you call are Greensboro same as when you mail them something. Why continue to throw good money after bad??