City’s tourism center closed for a month for cleanup after a
sewage overflow
Gilroy – The poop has hit the fan at the Gilroy Visitor’s Bureau. Okay, not the fan – but the bathroom and nearly all the floors.
The city’s tourism center at 7780 Monterey St. has been closed for a month as city workers clean up sewage overflow – an unintended byproduct of repairs to a stopped up sewer line nearby, according to Jane Howard, the Visitor’s Bureau interim head.
In the process of cleaning out the backed-up pipe, the office “received the benefits of the blockage, where sewage came out of the commode into the bathroom and two-thirds of our facility,” Howard said. “It was disgusting.”
The accident took place Jan. 15 but was not discovered until two days later, after the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. Howard said that “solid and liquid” waste infiltrated the carpets, flooring and sheet rock, though equipment and records stored above the floor were spared.
Clean-up required “tearing out everything affected by this mess,” said Howard, who in the meantime has worked a few blocks south at the Gilroy Chamber of Commerce.
“Sewer back-ups are really an unusual situation,” chamber Executive Director Susan Valenta said. “As soon as the back-up happened, they made the right decision to immediately take some action. Knowing it was going to take a while, the most important thing was making sure the Visitor’s Bureau could continue with business as usual.”
The down time at the bureau has not spelled the loss of rents for the city, which owns the building but allows the agency to use it for free. City officials have spent $15,722 to clean the building, though insurance will pick up all but $5,000 of that figure.
Work crews are now repainting the Visitor’s Bureau in anticipation of re-opening next week.
“It was a smelly affair,” Howard said. “I call it an unplanned remodeling.”
