Letter to Donors July 1, 2025

We are writing to update our donors to the Wissahickon Mills Foundation and discuss the Porch Restoration Project.

While we were pleased with the donor response to our initial fundraising efforts for the porch restoration, the repair needs for the porch have turned out to be much more challenging than originally predicted.

We recently received the Professional Engineer's detailed plans for the porch’s repair, which added significant findings to the original 2023 inspection, which formed the basis of the initial assessment of the project's scope.

The 2025 Professional Engineer's report was both comprehensive and "invasive" -- removing concrete around some existing beams and where the beams enter the porch piers. Unfortunately, during this inspection, significant corrosion of the pier bearing plates was in evidence. While the prior, cursory inspection in 2023 only identified that one of the bearing plates for the beam that penetrates the basement arch needed to be replaced, the current report makes it clear that the project would require replacing most, if not all, of the beam bearing plates used to support the beams.  (Shown to the right and in an attachment/link.)

Replacing many of the pier bearing plates for the porch will require the use of additional scaffolding, lifts, access, and shoring, resulting in increased material, setup, and labor costs.  This all translates to a marked "scope creep" in the project scope and cost. 

After adjusting for inflation, the projected cost rose dramatically from approximately $75,000 to $184,000. Although we do not yet have contractor bids to correspond with the Engineer's estimate, it appears that we will require additional funds to complete this project.

The funding shortfall for this project is substantial. 

Attached are additional details and initial questions & answers to further clarify the above summary. The overall 2023 estimate for all the mill renovations has increased significantly, and a separate analysis of this will be issued.

To our donors, we had hoped our first Porch Repair project report would be of the "we're on target" variety.  Sadly, we cannot share that news with you today. Instead, we are looking at a crucial repair need of the Club building that we simply do not have sufficient funds to complete at this time, despite our fundraising efforts to date.

The acquired wisdom from this project is that we erred in basing our initial assessment of our fundraising needs on an incomplete data set.  We find we now must amend project cost estimates and adjust donor expectations to bring them into alignment with the reality presented in this new and detailed new Professional Engineer inspection report.

We hope that we can count on your continued support as we try to make this project a reality.

Wissahickon Mills Foundation Board

Rosemay Rau, Judy Ayala, Griffin Affel, Peter Bernstein, Luara Lipkin, Charlie Field & Will Abbs

Attachment [Inserted below]: Porch Progress Report Questions and Answers: Porch Progress Report Questions

Cc: PCC Board Members

Porch Progress Report Questions and Initial Answers. [Updated July 5, 2025]

• 1.      What was missed in the first estimate? Ironically, more water & flood damage was revealed than originally reported. Also, we should have seen the estimate as a range; given the $75,000 base first estimate with inflation, the ‘rough order of magnitude’ principle referenced in the report should have caused us to convert the estimate to a -25% to +75% range of $56,250 to a $131,250 range (still well below the new estimate). Scope Creep for the bearing Plates added the bulk of the difference.
• 2.      Could the new $184,000 estimate be high? The new estimate includes an additional Estimating/Design Contingency of $25,000, which may be high since a new inspection and design plans are now in hand the estimator did note their worries about tariff impacts). In general, per the Project Management guidelines, after Design Specifications are completed the range for project budgets to –15% to +30%. That said, all the bricks on the Southeast Pier will be removed and then rebuilt, and we hope its interior support beam and footing are determined to be sound.
• 3.      Contractor bids? Under consideration, but we are hesitating now as it seems little chance that we will have enough funds until we complete another annual funding campaign.
• 4.      Design Alternatives? We plan to explore alternatives to the current approach, specifically regarding the potential phasing of both the current plan and the overall plan.
• 5.      Replace the whole porch? We agree with the Professional Engineer’s response that does “…not recommend replacing the entire porch. The costs for replacing the entire porch would be substantially more because in the repair approach, we aren't touching the roof, roof framing, or replacing the steel beams. Even if we said let's replace the piers and slab, and leave the roof as is, you'd still have to support it during the replacement, which would require expensive scaffolding or shoring. Plus, new footings in the floodplain would not be an easy approval from the {PA} DEP or the {new} PWD “flood permit” group.
• 6.      Could the project be split into two smaller projects? No, such a split would notably increase costs due to duplicating ‘mobilization’ overhead and related setup costs. (The excluded cosmetic repairs to the porch slab are the exception to this statement, as we may handle on a DIY basis.)
• a.      Dec 6, 2025, Update: See the WMF webpage site tab “Garnt Applications.”
• 7.      When will the beams need to be replaced? PE response: “It's important to divert the water away from the structure, so by not encapsulating the steel with concrete, it should drain faster and allow it to air out. J&M's decision to not reconstruct the concrete around the steel beams will extend the beam's useful lifetime. … the steel beams still have a lot of life left. They could be repaired by welding new steel plates along the flanges and webs before replacing them, so there are still many stages of interventions before replacement. Once the steel beams are exposed, scraped, primed, and painted, they could have a useful life of another 50+ years.”  
• 8.      Bearing Plates’ useful life? The old plates likely exceeded their useful life by many decades, as evidenced by the cracks in the bricks. New, treated steel plates will have a useful life of 50+ years, even though in the floodplain.
• 9.      How does the 2023 estimate compare to the 2025 estimate? The next page presents one of the two summaries developed to document the changes. The other analysis is equally focused on the required construction material needs and equally depressing, yielding about the same answer. For background, J&M Presentation Studios prepared the attached plans (the smaller PDF contains the most interesting illustrations, specifically page 4), and International Consultants, Inc. (ICI) prepared the cost estimates for J&M to review and provide to us.
• 10. Detailed questions? Ideas? Please direct them to the WMF Treasurer, Griffin Affel,  gpaffel@comcast.net, as he has the data from the Professional Engineers and ICI.

Porch Bearing Plates SW pier of Porch after cement encasement removed.

 

2023 estimate vs the revised 2025 – Increase in cost estimate ~$109,000

Selected page 4 from the Detailed Construction Plans with two close-up bearing plate pictures added.

 https://www.philacanoe.org/resources/Wissahickon%20Mills%20Foundation/Mill%20Repairs%20Files%20for%20Links/Porch%20Progress%20Report%20Questions%20and%20Initial%20Answers.pdf