Last week at Fayetteville City Hall, the majority yielded, unexpectedly and likely temporarily, to the minority.
Mayor Lioneld Jordan's administration asked the City Council to approve the change order to Nabholz Construction's contract to build a parking deck northwest of Dickson Street and West Avenue. In 2018, the city estimated the parking deck, designed to replace the surface parking lot west of the Walton Arts Center, would cost $10 million.
That estimate was clearly way off. Last Tuesday's "guaranteed maximum price" with Nabholz set the mark at $13.2 million. And that is after a process of value engineering to cut more than $1.3 million out of the project. So the reality is the 2018 estimate was off by about half.
Nobody in 2018 could have anticipated the cost complications of a worldwide pandemic. Costs are undoubtedly higher, too, because negotiations with private landowners at the parking deck site have gone on longer than planned.
Voters, as part of a bond election to fund several city projects in 2019, approved an arts-oriented corridor linking the Walton Arts Center and TheatreSquared to the area around the Fayetteville Public Library, through nature-focused walking and biking paths, a forested area known as Fay Jones Woods and a civic gathering space where are the current Walton Arts Center parking exists today. The overall project will be known after opening as the Ramble.
To marshal support among Dickson Street area businesses, Jordan pledged the replacement parking, i.e. the deck, would be completed before the surface-level parking is disrupted.
Fayetteville's challenge is its commitment -- to holders of $31.6 million in tax-free municipal bonds -- to spend or have at least 85% committed by August 2022 the money raised through the bond sale. The city could shelve the project, but that means the city will have spent a lot of money on interest payments, design work and other fees on money returned to investors, while taxpayers end up with no deck or arts corridor. And investors in the future would likely have less trust in the city of Fayetteville, which usually translates into higher interest rates for taxpayer-funded projects.
We are 21 days away from 2022. To quote the great philosopher Stevie Ray Vaughan, time keeps ticking away.
Yet when Mayor Jordan last Tuesday evening asked City Council members for a motion to approve the Nabholz contract change, it was hard to tell, but I think the microphones picked up only the chirping of crickets, probably signed on via Zoom, of course. No elected official is ever going to be thrilled to make a motion to cover more than $3 million in unanticipated costs.
Even more surprising was the fact that, after a motion finally came, the contract change failed, with three council members voting "yes" and to three voting "no." It is indeed an oddity when a public body votes against a project that voters gave clear approval for.
The result really stems from a perfect storm of numbers. The City Council has one vacancy, which won't be filled until a special election in February. Sonia Harvey, who represents Ward 1, was absent. The contract required five affirmative votes to pass, so the 3-3 result even left the final decision out of reach for Mayor Jordan, who can choose to cast a vote when it will make a difference.
Now it appears a decision in favor of the contract is likely this week. Mayor Jordan has called a special meeting for Tuesday. Harvey has indicated she plans to support the contract change and council member D'Andre Jones, who was one of the three who voted against it last week, now says he will favor it.
Who knew "The Ramble" would turn out to be an apt description for how this project makes its way toward reality?