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Library Construction Costs Higher than Anticipated

What’s going on with the library construction costs?  What’s the deal with construction management?  You’ve heard a few things through the grapevine and don’t know if they are true?  Well, you are reading the right article.  Here are the facts…

The library board decided to go with the construction management model for several reasons.  The most important reason was that this is a public project in the community.  With a construction manager the bids could be broken down into smaller bid packages, allowing smaller, local businesses the opportunity to be part of this important community project.  Other reasons were to have more involvement in the process, including costs and quality.

Building bids included construction, site work, and geothermal costs.  Bids came in at $2,276,301.  Aside from those items, the library building budget also includes furnishings, technology, site survey, architect and engineering fees, financing costs, capital campaign costs, and an endowment/initial operating budget. These costs are estimated to total $637,104.  After bids the cost appeared to be $2,913,405.  This does not include the contingency portion of the budget that was estimated at $68,000.

Now for the rest of the story…(there’s always more, isn’t there?)  Gardner Architecture did not include an indoor sprinkler system in the estimates because it isn’t required by state code.  The city has required the installation of a sprinkler system for safety and insurance reasons.  The additional cost for this is $71,032. 

Next, the construction crew started excavating the site.  Five test borings had been done on the site as part of the preparations and they had run into very little in the way of buried debris.  When the crews starting running into hospital foundations, pipes, and tunnels they checked and found out that it was necessary to remove all of these items in order for the ground to settle as it needs to for the future safety of the library building.  The additional costs came up to $17,948. 

To summarize, costs thus far have totaled $88,980 more than expected.  Bids came in on target, but at this point our entire contingency fund and more has already been encumbered with unexpected costs.  The capital campaign has not yet reached its stretch goal of $3.1 million.  It is now more important than ever to meet this goal, and would be very helpful to the start of a new era in our library if that goal could be surpassed.

Library Tidbits:.
Summer Reading Program
Drawing for the grand prizes in the summer reading program will take place at the Riverside Cinema movie this Friday, Aug. 10^th at approximately 8:30 pm.  The grand prize for age 0-5 is a Leapster Learning System, for ages 6-9 it is a Portable DVD Player, and for ages 10-12 it is a Zen V Plus 2 GB MP3 Player.  You need not be present to win.     

Riverside Cinema
Don’t miss any more of the free movies under the stars shown on the big screen at the Riverwalk Park Band Pavilion:
August 10th, 8:30 pm –Free Sports Movie
Sept. 7^th, 8:30 pm – Free Western 

Online Book Club
We now offer an Online Book Club that delivers books electronically! Each day, Monday through Friday, the library emails subscribers a portion of a book that takes about five minutes to read. They're able to read two or three chapters from a book during the week. If they like a book, they can check it out from our library, either through our collection or through Interlibrary Loan.  Each week the library features new books.  You can sign up for the service at the library’s web site: www.indylibrary.org by clicking on the logo that says Online Book Clubs - Click & Read

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