FAYETTEVILLE -- Mayor Lioneld Jordan and the City Council will wait to hear from hired professionals and city staff before deciding what to do about a parking deck project that could end up costing millions of dollars more than estimates.
Jeremy Pate, Development Services director, said Tuesday he expects to report back to the council in the coming weeks.
At A Glance
Council Action
Fayetteville’s City Council met Tuesday reviewed items to be discussed at their Sept. 2 meeting. Items include:
• A revised lease and 15-year plan for the Botanical Garden of the Ozarks.
• A more than $113 million capital improvement plan for the next five years.
• A rezoning request for 14 acres southwest of Steele and Joyce boulevards, across the street from Malco Razorback Cinema.
Source: Staff Report
That will give the construction manager for the project, Baldwin & Shell Construction, Garver engineering and city officials time to sort out why estimates were so out of whack with bids the city received Friday.
If all of the bids are accepted, the Spring Street parking deck will cost $12.2 million to build. According to Pate, that's $2.4 million, or about 24 percent, higher than an April estimate of $9.8 million. Pate clarified after Tuesday's meeting the April estimate included a roughly $2.4 million anticipated contribution from the Walton Arts Center for its portion of the "north liner building," where new backstage space and administrative offices for the center are planned.
A $7.4 million figure, as reported in Tuesday's edition, only represented the April estimate for the city's share of construction costs. Pate said the city's share of total parking deck costs won't be clear until city and arts center officials decide how to divide the new, higher-than-expected costs.
Pate on Tuesday noted several reasons why bids might have come in so much higher than expected. He mentioned the apparent low concrete bid, which, at $4.5 million, was $1.8 million, or 67 percent, higher than an April estimate of $2.7 million.
"We've been aware of issues that was based on the construction industry, generally, getting busier and having volume and capacity issues," Pate said. "Firms simply aren't as hungry as they were a year ago."
He added several large specialty concrete companies in Texas and Oklahoma that could have offered lower prices may have been reluctant to bid on a "relatively small" parking deck project.
"Their mobilization costs, coming to Northwest Arkansas, getting here, their overhead was simply too high," Pate said.
In the coming weeks, city officials will work with Garver and Baldwin & Shell representatives to either negotiate current bids, cut elements from the project or rebid some of the items that came in over budget.
All three scenarios will add time to a project that at one point was expected to be finished by now.
"This is how the numbers came in," Jordan said Tuesday. "We're just going to have to make some decisions."
Paul Becker, city finance director, said the project must be 85 percent complete by mid-December 2015, or the tax-exempt status of $6.2 million in bonds used to pay for the project will be in jeopardy.
Pate said once construction begins, the project should take 10 to 11 months to complete.
NW News on 08/27/2014