NEW BERN, N.C. (WITN) – The city of New Bern now has two construction projects underway at City Hall with the addition of a brick repointing project.

The repointing project overlaps a $3.9 million elevator project that began a year ago and will give elevator access to City Hall and make the building ADA-compliant once complete.

“At the end of the day, City Hall has not been handicap accessible. And when you’ve got a historic building, I think the best thing is we’re going to be able to allow City Hall to be accessible to all; to attend meetings, to the businesses if need be, to serve our citizens,” said City Manager Foster Hughes.

Hughes says approximately $580,000 has gone into the brick repointing project which started two weeks ago and is expected to take close to six months to complete.

It replaces aging mortar between the bricks on the exterior of the building.

Hughes says the project also works to fix moisture infiltration issues caused by Hurricane Florence.

“During Hurricane Florence, we received significant water damage on the inside and that was because of intrusion of water going through the bricks and the mortar. And so we did get some funding from FEMA to repoint the bricks on two sides of the building. And our governing board gave us some additional funds to be able to do the entire building. So we’re doing that project now,” Hughes.

Hughes says the building has signs of moisture infiltration inside the 2nd-floor courtroom. The most recent significant event that allowed moisture to seep inside the building through the brick exterior was hurricane Florence in 2018.