The Lafayette County Board of Supervisors approved spending $57,625 on design plans for a new heating, ventilation and air conditioning system at the Haven House.

The building, owned by Lafayette County and leased to Communicare, is used as a 48-bed residential substance use disorder treatment center. It was built around 2000.

Joel Hollowell, director of development services for Lafayette County, told the board Monday that there has been trouble with Haven House’s HVAC system for some time, and due to how the air handlers are placed in the building, repairs and replacement can be difficult.

“We need to come up with a different system,” he said. “We’re spending a lot of money to fix them or to change them out, where we feel it would better just to do a completely new system.”

Hollowell asked the board members to consider approving the $57,625 to be paid to Tanksley and Associates, a mechanical engineering firm, that will design the proposed new system.

Hollowell explained that the current system uses a cooling tower that cools or heats the water and then circulates it through the air handlers around the building.

“The new system uses similar units throughout the building, but it uses coolant rather than water,” Hollowell said.

Hollowell said the estimated cost for the new system is around $700,000 to $1 million; however, the true cost won’t be known until the system is designed and then put out to bid.

“Then you can revisit this and decide where you want to go from there,” Hollowell said.

Also, at Monday’s meeting, the board approved the preliminary and final site plan for the C-Store, a gas station-convenience store, at the corner of County Road 105 and Highway 6 East.

The store owner is required to build a 6-foot, opaque fence around the back of the property that borders a residential neighborhood. The fence must be covered with vegetation screening.