Decatur City Commission Set to Approve $38 Million Budget for Beacon Hill
Decatur Metro | March 18, 2013From tonight’s Decatur City Commission agenda (page 44), a letter from Deputy City Manager Hugh Saxon to City Manager Peggy Merriss…
The purpose of this memorandum is to recommend approval of a project budget of $38,000,000 and an agreement with Potts Construction for construction manager at risk services for Beacon Municipal Complex improvements at a guaranteed maximum price of of $30,375,000. This project will be financed through a combination of the City’s fund balance and HOST revenues ($6,000,000) and the issuance of Urban Redevelopment Authority bonds ($32,300,000).
Mr. Saxon goes on to detail what will be done to the Beacon Hill site, including “selective demolition” and construction of a 30,000 square foot Police Dept, adaptive reuse of 25,000 square feet for the CSD Central Office, about 28,000 square feet for community recreation, arts and cultural spaces; “and major storm drainage improvements to support the site development”.
Latest from Decaturish
WTF!
Someone please tell me that there is more than the 83,000 SF listed for this project! This works out to $366/SF for the GMP portion of the project. Assuming that the rest of the $38M project budget is used, that $7.625M accounts for another $92/SF!
Please, please tell me that there is more to the project being done than this.
Skeptic – Ok, I’ve read the agenda for you, since you asked, and am happy to report that $10 million is for the storm water project under Ebster field – not actually part of the building. There are other options for this but it sounds like they picked the most prudent one for this necessary project. While I was doing your reading for you, I noticed a detailed breakdown of all the costs. Again, happy to report that there’s $1.1 million allotted to re-do Ebster pool. So you wouldn’t want to add that into the building cost. Where does that leave it us since you’re handling the math portions of our group project?
Does any money from the Storm Water Utility go to the structures under the Ebster Field? Appearances suggest otherwise.
I don’t understand why you responded to Skeptic with condescension and insults. You couldn’t just answer the question?
And no, I’m not weak-kneed or oversensitive. I just don’t think Skeptic’s post required such a caustic response.
And let the flaming begin…
Just having a little fun. Skeptic was asking (twice!) for someone to tell him/her that there was more to the story! Which a simple click and read showed that there was! Plus, given that Skeptic clearly didn’t read the story, I thought a caustic “WTF!” was a bit hyperbolic on her/his part! So I thought I might go that route too! Sorry to offend!
No harm, no foul Warren. You can read for me and I will do the math and thinking for you
The budget for the building per the breakdown is $18M which comes to $217/SF and is still very high. The A&E fee is just over $2M (design plus CA) which at the $30M GMP cost for the project is 6.67% of construction and is HUGELY higher than the private sector would pay for this scale of project.
One can only hope that the final result is worthy of the cost – as it appears that cost has not yet been a concern of those advocating and approving of the project.
The great thing about this is that if these numbers are as out of whack as you say they are, you can show up to the meeting tonight and get an explanation. I look forward to hearing the city’s response.
$217 SF is not bad for a commercial building, especially when you consider the special things that must be done since a good part of it is a police station and court building.
One special item is an area on the front for screen projection and seating so that we can have community film nights in the summer- not something that is typically in a commercial building.
I’ve lost track of the new debt taken on since the original bond referendum a few years back. Anyone have a tally?
I don’t think that the total debt is simply the issue. The question is, what is the revenue stream that is going to be covering the debt payments? For most of the other previous cases, it’s simply our taxes. In this case, however, the COD will have a tenant (CSD) paying rent, in addition to other streams into the complex (rental fees, etc. – this could be negligible though). It does appear that some of this will be coming out of the fund balance. However, as long we have revenues covering out debt payments then we are fine. This is a great time to for cities to be borrowing money – it’s practically free to do so right now and won’t be that way forever. It doesn’t seem that there is any sort of crazy financial wizardry happening with any of this. In this particular case, I’m assuming that this wouldn’t be happening without a paying tenant going in.
I don’t think CSD will be paying rent, since they’re covering a portion of the construction cost. A share of utility cost, perhaps, but not rent.