County looks at options to trim new law enforcement center and courthouse update project costs

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com 

There will still definitely be a new county law enforcement center built in Floyd County in the next couple of years. And there will definitely be updates made to the existing courthouse, county officials say.

But the particulars of those projects are still in flux, and the completion date of the project will now likely be spring 2021 instead of late fall 2020.

Floyd County supervisors met in a workshop session Monday morning in person with Sid Samuels, president and owner of The Samuels Group, their construction manager, and by telephone with members of Prochaska & Associates, their project architects.

The topic for discussion: how to either trim about $1.6 million to $1.8 million from the estimated project costs, come up with additional sources of funding, or, most likely, find a combination of those two things.

Among the things being considered on the cost-saving side are reducing the size of the atrium that will connect the law enforcement center with the courthouse, not creating new handicapped-accessible restrooms in the atrium for each floor of the courthouse, and using less expensive materials and less expensive construction techniques in some areas.

They also talked about initially reducing the number of jail beds from the original 32 in the plan, but doing so in a way that would allow them to be added later when needed.

Supervisor Roy Schwickerath, who along with Supervisor Doug Kamm was going into the details of the latest estimates for the first time, had a number of questions about possible alternatives.

But, Schwickerath cautioned, “I don’t want to see us cut things out of this that we can’t get back five years from now if we say we really wish we had that.”

“Absolutely,” said Supervisor Linda Tjaden, who is a member of the core group that is handling day-to-day management of the project.

“Believe me,” Tjaden said, “that has been in the  forefront of our mind, really challenging ourselves to say, ‘Do we really want to give this up?’

“I do believe, coming out of this project, I want to recommend to this board we still put a five-year plan together,” she said.

Last May, county voters approved spending up to $13.5 million in general obligation bonds paid back through property taxes for a new law enforcement center and courthouse updates including all new windows and a new heating and air-conditioning system.

With the cost of issuing and administering the bonds, along with “soft costs” such as furnishings and other costs and contingencies, the total cost of construction needs to come in somewhere between about $11.5 million and $11.7 million.

The latest construction cost estimate, provided by Samuels, is for $13.3 million.

The initial cost estimate that was used to determine the amount of bonds to issue came from Prochaska and Associates, based on average construction prices for the type of work being proposed for each area of the project.

When The Samuels Group started looking at actual construction and materials cost estimates for the plans Prochaska provided, it came up with the $13.3 million estimate.

At the meeting Monday, Curt Field, architect and project manager with Prochaska & Associates, said they had sent revised plans to the supervisors Friday with changes to the atrium and some other changes.

Among the atrium revisions would be limiting it to a floor and a half in height instead of reaching to the top of the courthouse as originally proposed, and reducing the amount of space between the courthouse and the law enforcement center.

Another change would be reducing the amount of glass in the atrium, from having the entire exterior walls made of glass as in original plans.

Samuels said he would take the plans and estimate how much difference in costs the changes would make.

Samuels said that the bids would be let in groups of alternates, breaking out specific projects in the courthouse, perhaps floor by floor, so that when the bids are received and the supervisors have the actual numbers in hand they can decide which parts of the project to accept.

Schwickerath broached the question of reducing the size of the jail, suggesting looking at building 28 beds or 30 beds instead of the 32 in the plan.

Sheriff Jeff Crooks, who is also a member of the core group on the project, said the current census for the jail is about 20 detainees, including those in the county jail now located on the top floor of the courthouse and those being housed in jails in other counties.

He said a jail is considered full at 80 percent occupancy, to allow for separation between the different classifications of detainees such as men and women and juveniles and adults.

A 20-person census at 80 percent occupancy would require 25 beds.

Jim Classe, a Prochaska architect who is the designer on the Floyd County project, said there are a number of ways to plan for later jail expansion, and agreed that “the most dramatic way to reduce the cost is to reduce the square footage.”

Samuels said two ways to tackle building fewer beds now are to plan for a possible addition to the building in the future, or to actually build the complete building size now but complete a fewer number of cells and leave space for additional cells to be completed when needed.

“A lot of these are good ideas,” Samuels said, but what they need to do now is put some cost impacts on the ideas.

For example, he said, some change that seems to be saving a lot of money may have only a small impact, “and you go, wait a minute, we just did all this work for $1,000 — the cost benefit isn’t there.”

“The reason we went after the atrium is we really needed to move the needle,” Samuels said. “We needed to get it closer back to the referendum. Some of these items we can do and explore, but at the end of the day you may look at that and go, ‘for $1,500 we’re doing what?’”

Prochaska’s Field said his staff was continuing to work on the bid documents based on the original plan because “that’s all we can do.”

“While these other items are in flux we can’t really do much with them,” he said. “We’re back sort of at schematic design about the atrium.”

Tjaden and County Auditor Gloria Carr, another member of the core group, said they would talk with Field and Classe after the meeting, and Samuels said he would come up with cost estimates for the suggested changes.