Lazaro Aleman, ECB Publishing, Inc.
The historic A-Building is seemingly turning into a ka-ching building in the estimation of some county officials.
With nearly $4 million already expended on the renovation, unforeseen problems keep cropping up at every turn, raising the project's overall cost. It's expected, moreover, that it will take another $4 million or so to complete the work.
The latest surprise came on Thursday, Aug. 16, when architect Bill Douglas, who has been overseeing the renovation for the last 20 or so years, presented the board with a change order for $38,000. The $38,000, Douglas explained, would cover the engineer's drawing plus the construction of a gravity storm pipe from the building's basement to a stormwater manhole on US 90.
That's because groundwater keeps burbling up into the basement, flooding it, and the sump pump installed to alleviate the flooding has been running 100 percent of the time and finally wore out.
Commissioner Betsy Barfield responded to the request emotionally.
“It disturbs me deeply that once again we're being asked to spend more money on this building,” Barfield said. “It's a continual process...No offense, but you're nickeling and diming us to death. It's appalling. We don't have this kind of money.”
Barfield suggested that Douglas return to the contractor and engineer and have the two find a way to come up with the $38,000 from their own pockets, as much as the county was paying them to do the work. She noted that the contractor even charged the county for such items as cellphone use, which she found “unbelievable.”
“Frankly, I'm not sure that this will solve the problem,” Barfield said of the proposed drainage pipe. “This has been a continuing issue. I can't put any faith that this is the last time that we're going to address this water problem.”
Douglas defended the proposed expenditure. The flooding basement was an unknown condition when the project had started, he said. It was the nature of such projects that some things were unknowable until one got deeper into the work, he said.
And yes, they had known about the water problem for a while, but they had believed that installing the sump pump would solve the problem, he said.
As for using monies from other areas of the grants to resolve the flooding problem, it wasn't doable, he said. The state was very definitive about how its money could be used, going so far as breaking down the permissible uses into seven or eight categories, Douglas said. And none of the categories fit the basement flooding, he said.
“I don't see the state going along with this,” Douglas said.
As for holding the contractor and consultants accountable for the cost, he also couldn't see it, he said. They, after all, were businessmen, not unlike anyone else trying to make a living, he said.
But Douglas agreed to take Barfield's suggestion to the contractor and the engineer and get their input on the matter.
Commissioner J.T. Surles also suggested that the engineer look at the possibility of above ground causes for the flooding, in terms of retaining and diverting rainwater from the area.
In the end, the board approved an expenditure of $13,800 to install piling to stabilize the interior staircase.
In late July, Douglas presented commissioners with his firm's estimated cost of $161,240 to complete the Final Construction Documents (architectural, structural, mechanical, plumbing, electrical and miscellaneous data and security design work) for the completion of the A-Building restoration.
At the time, Douglas told commissioners that the estimated construction cost for the restoration's completion, based on 2018 dollars, was $4,390,000, plus or minus 10%. Meaning that the actual cost could range from $3,951,000 to $4,829,000, depending on when the construction was undertaken and barring unforeseen problems.
As of earlier this year, $3,851,970 had been expended on the restoration effort in grants and local contributions. And at that, Douglas said, the restoration was only about 50 percent complete at that point. The building's restoration started in 1997, then under the auspices of the Jefferson County School Board.