The school district’s planned maintenance and storage building on Old Lancaster Avenue, next to TE Middle School, has mushroomed into a major multi-million dollar project!
The District’s plan is to demolish and replace the existing maintenance and storage building on the site with a new 12,000 square ft. building with 29 parking spaces. If you recall, the District purchase purchased an adjacent property, 892 Old Lancaster Avenue in August 2012, for $265K and paid to have the house demolished to have it in the ready for the new maintenance building.
According to the District’s ‘Capital Sources & Usage Report’ in October 2013, the estimated building costs for the new maintenance and storage building was $2.7 million. During 2014, the proposed construction cost escalated another $500K to and an estimate of $3,177,500. Fast-forward to the last District Facilities Meeting and the Taj Mahal (sorry maintenance and storage building) construction estimates has soared again. The new estimate for the building is $3,966 … nearly $4 million to store tractors, snowplows and extra paper towels. Wow.
Why the significant increase? In two years, the building costs have escalated from $2.7 to $4 million! According to the Facilities Committee documents, some of the additional costs of the nearly $1 million increase is for site work, including the mitigation of unsuitable soil. Soil testing has revealed that the soil on the site is fill. Up to 8 feet of soil has to be removed and then replaced in one foot ‘lifts’, each one being compacted.
Other reasons for the increase are related to the final design of the storm water system (particularly given that this large building is going in to a residential neighborhood), the replacement of the retaining wall, final design of foundations, and landscaping.
It really is inaccurate to say that the District’s new maintenance and storage building is a $4 million project. You have to add in the purchase of the neighbor’s property, District studies, township fees, geotechnical soil survey, traffic study, Chester Valley engineering, legal and architectural fees, etc. etc. which make the final cost more likely $5 million than the current estimate of $4 million!
The Facilities Committee documents also contained the following language concerning the maintenance and storage building:
As we develop the construction documents, we will continue to make the building as economical as possible. But the scope of the site development is established. In our experience Becker & Frondorf is a conservative estimator, so we would expect some movement in the number, but I do not expect a significant reduction.
For anyone that has been involved in a construction project of even the smallest scope, there’s never a ‘reduction’ from the original estimate. From personal experience, construction projects always end up with unexpected ‘add-ons’!
In a comment from Ray Clarke on the subject of the maintenance and storage building, he states, “That $4 million purchases 11,600 square feet ground level, 3,300 square feet “mezzanine”: $270 per square foot cost. Google tells me “a typical 20,000-square-foot warehouse will cost you about $35 a square foot”. How, or rather ‘why’ should the school board allocate $270/square foot cost if a typical warehouse space should cost $35/square ft. Even if Ray’s Google search is off by an order of magnitude, how can this building cost this much money!
The District’s planned Taj Mahal of a maintenance building is on Tredyffrin Township’s Planning Comission’s agenda tomorrow night for Final Land Development approval. The meeting is at the township building at 7 PM. On May 7, the District released a RFP requesting sealed bids for the new maintenance and storage building listing a deadline of 1 PM on Friday, June 5. If all goes well at the Planning Commission meeting, my guess is that this project is on a fast track for a summer start date!
How can the District possibly afford a $5 million maintenance and storage building? Seriously, spending $5 million on a maintenance building does not benefit the kids or the quality of the education in the school district. Taxes go up year after year, yet the Board tells us that they are continuing to look at ways to reduce spending. If that is true, why not look at other solutions to the District’s storage problem that don’t include spending mega-million dollars for a maintenance building.
The Board wants us to believe that they must outsource the aides and paraeducators because the District cannot afford to pay health care but … somehow; there is money for a $5 million maintenance and storage building. Anyone else but me think that there’s something wrong with this picture?