By MELINDA J. OVERSTREET
for Glasgow News 1
If things had gone according to a tentative schedule distributed last summer, construction would be under way now on a justice center for Barren County. As things sit now, commencement of that work is still months away.
At Wednesday’s meeting of the local project development board, members of that panel expressed frustration – not for the first time – at the pace of progress or the seeming lack thereof.
As is typical, a report from the design team was early in the agenda. Brian Estep, one of the architects involved, said there was much to update other than the “good news that the local permit review process has been completed and we’re working to get the permit review team paid.” He said that was moving in the right direction, and the design team was working to get the final bid documents to Alliance Corp., the company handling construction management.
“We’re scheduled to do that on May the 21st,” Estep said.
District Judge Gabe Pendleton, a board member, began to ask something about “why those documents …,” before shifting gears.
“I mean, part of the reason that we started our land work early was so we could have this stuff done in time … and be ready to go, and I’m not sure why we’re not there,” Pendleton said of the preconstruction sitework.
Estep attributed the delay to a combination of factors – the time it took for the Kentucky Administrative Office of the Courts to review the plans and the time it has taken the design team to then review the AOC’s comments and make revisions as requested, for starters. He said there was also “a little bit of a snafu” with the permit review.
“Originally, I think everyone was under the impression that it was going to be reviewed by the, if I get this right, Kentucky Board of Housing and Construction at a higher level,” he said.
Adam Gillett, another architect, added that it would have been a state-level review, and they had gone to “great effort to confirm that during design,” but apparently the state people changed their minds once the paperwork was submitted and allowed a local review, “which is better for us all, but it’s not what we expected, so we lost a little bit of time submitting it and then having to resubmit.”
Estep said there was also a bit of an issue in that the design team got to the point of submitting documents for review and then moved on to work on other things, so then they had to “get everything plugged back in.”
Circuit Judge John T. Alexander, vice chair of the board, asked for an idea of how long it would be now before they can actually hire someone to begin construction work.
Tommy Gumm, CEO of Alliance Corp., said his company would need a minimum of two weeks to finalize the construction documents after that, and then they could advertise for bids. Pendleton asked how long they have to allow for bids to come in, and Gumm said four to five weeks, so that would probably put them into July, but Pendleton said he thought it would be later than that.
“What we were told was January, end of January. We were going to start this process, we thought, in January, and get it out to bid so that we would be ready – we would already have them hired and be ready to start when the weather got warm, and now we’re looking at the middle to end of summer, is what we’re looking at,” Pendleton said.
The board typically has two meetings per month, but some of those have been cancelled when there were no actions required of the board, and Pendleton said it felt like nothing was getting done in the interim periods.
“I’m not saying that nobody’s done what they’re supposed to do, but I’m just, I mean, we’ve been at this a long time,” the district judge said, adding that it seems like some projects were already completed that began after this one when this one hasn’t truly started. “It starts to get a little frustrating. And the people in the community, when they continue to ask you questions about why you’re not getting it done, and you’ve got to give them answers and there aren’t really any good answers …. I understand when it involves the government and it involves a board, it’s a lot different than a private company. It’s going to take longer.”
He said he just wanted everyone to know that frustration is building. He said it’s great to see some work being done, with the preconstruction phase.
“But you tell me it’s going to be August before we can start building something, that’s going to be very frustrating,” Pendleton said.
Alexander said he agrees with that sentiment.
“I’m not interested in pointing fingers, so that’s not really what the idea is,” he said, but they believed that when spring arrived, things would be getting done that made it look like they were progressing toward getting in this new facility, and now it’s not even going be close to where they thought they would be even six months ago.
“So we’re just frustrated. It doesn’t really matter how we got to this point in the sense that we can’t undo it anyway, but I’m frustrated,” he said.
Judge-Executive Jamie Bewley Byrd, board chair, said Jessamine County was at the same level they were at one point, but now Barren County has actually jumped ahead of them progresswise because they’ve had “way more issues.” But she said she understood, because she also thought they’d be putting the project out for bids around this time, asking for confirmation from Gumm.
“Well, yes, because we’ve continued to slip,” he said, referring to a series of delays for one reason or another.
Jerry Combs, an AOC facilities representative, then reminded them that once they get all the bid packages in that hopefully will be within budget, the financing piece has to be finalized.
“What we were told on other projects is, after they get that number and they go out to sell bonds, there’s about a 30- to 60-day – you might correct me if I’m wrong – timeframe to get that kind of done, too, so that’s got to be factored in,” Combs said.
He said that has taken the boards in some counties by surprise when the time came, so he wanted to try to avoid that here.
Sam Day Dickinson, a representative of Baird, a financial management company that is to handle the bond sale, essentially confirmed that, adding that once they get the final cost figure, it takes about 30 days to get the sale one the calendar, and once the bonds are sold, it takes roughly another 30 days to actually get the money.
Alexander said that, on an intellectual level, they understand these things and that there are a whole lot of steps involved, and it’s not the same process as when an individual is building a house. He reiterated the frustration felt when he has to explain to others in the community, though, why the timeline keeps moving. Six months ago when people asked them, he said, it appeared they would have it advertised for bids by March.
Indeed, for the July 31 PDB meeting, an adjusted schedule was distributed with a tentative start date of March 17 for construction to begin.
“When Tommy said, you know, August, or whatever, that’s just like absolute best-case scenario. We’re probably talking about, the way everything else is going, it’s probably going to be after that, and then you do the bonds, and then before you know it, you’re not just few months behind, you’re a year behind, because you can’t start building anything in December,” Alexander said.
Rich Alexander, who represents the local bar association on the board and has no known familial relationship to Judge Alexander, then asked what the new best-case scenario would be, because he gets questions like everyone else, so he wanted to know how he could say, realistically.
Gumm said that with a 60-day allowance for the bond issue, they’re probably into September.
Byrd said she thought Rich Alexander was just asking about the start time, but she wanted to know about the time construction would take once begun. Gumm said about 24 months. Byrd had asked for a worst-case scenario, and after the meeting, Gumm said he misheard that part and that 24 months was more like the best case, with 30 months being the more accurate response to her question.
From there, the meeting went into the construction manager’s report, per se, and Gumm said they were going through some additional design information that was just discussed about a week ago and conversations are underway about how building envelope testing will be done, and that will need to be factored into the overall construction time.
Otherwise, he said, things were going well with the preconstruction work, but could do with a little less rain. He noted that a couple of areas had unsuitable soils, so an adjustment was necessary for what they believed to be there that would have to be removed and replaced, and since that adjustment was requested, two more smaller areas with the same issue had been encountered, so he anticipates a future change order for that.
Another adjustment before the board for approval was for drainage work.
“When we were here, I believe a month ago, we talked about the necessity of putting in a temporary line to get stormwater off the street off of our site, so we had proposed a temporary line. And then when we got into looking at it and the design team started looking at it, they said, ‘Well, what if we make a few changes in that and that becomes our permanent line?’” Gumm said.
He said that would be great, because then they wouldn’t have to go onto and under the street to do the work and have traffic disruptions, etc.
“I think that was a good move on everybody’s part. Take a little extra time, investigate that. The cost went up some – $20,000 to $30,000 – but I can tell you, conservatively, not having to go out on that street and do that work saved us $80,000 to $100,000, easily,” he said.
“So we’ll make up for it later?” Judge Alexander asked.
“Yeah, we’ll have to spend it anyway, but it gave us an opportunity to look at a redesign that’s actually a better alternative,” Gumm said.
With that, change orders were approved by the four members of the board present, all in person, for the drainage adjustment and the unsuitable soils as well as a disbursement request for $173,594.27.
Board members Julie Jolly and Joan Norris were absent.
The next regular meeting is at noon May 14. It may be attended via Zoom or in person in Judge Alexander’s circuit courtroom on Floor 2 at the Barren County Courthouse.
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