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Council Approves Construction Contract for New Meeting Room

by Collin Breaux
March 9, 2023 11:19AM
in EYE ON SJC, News
San Juan Capistrano Officials, Staff Say Goodbye to City Hall Building

The current City Hall building in San Juan Capistrano will be torn down to make way for a new City Hall complex. Photo: Collin Breaux

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The San Juan Capistrano City Council plans to eventually conduct their meetings in a new City Council Chamber at the San Juan Capistrano Community Center on Camino Del Avion.

To keep that project moving along, the City Council on Tuesday, March 7, unanimously approved contracting with Neuroth Construction, the lowest bidder out of nine companies, for construction of the new facility. The room is expected to be built by the end of this year.

“The exterior entryway to the Community Center would be enhanced with some updated landscaping and signage to make it clear that’s where the City Council Chamber is located,” Assistant to the City Manager and Community Services Director Matisse Reischl said. “As you enter the building, you’d walk down along the corridor and, along the walls there, is where the former mayor’s portraits and current councilmembers’ portraits would be.”

A television monitor would also be in the corridor to broadcast meetings for people not in the Council Chamber.

“The scope of work involves opening out the east side of the community hall and constructing a raised dais for use by the City Council and commissions/committees conducting public meetings,” the city said in an agenda report. “Improvements also include construction of a new restroom, accessibility upgrades, casework and structural modifications, installation of a new 150kW standby generator and mechanical equipment upgrades, and installation of new lighting and audio/visual equipment.”

Neuroth’s bid was for $2.7 million, significantly higher than a preliminary project estimate of $1.7 million.

Mayor Howard Hart expressed some concern about the jump in costs, though ultimately voted for the construction contract.

“That’s a pretty stark difference,” Hart said. “You underestimated by half, basically. Not real good, quite honestly, if we’re judging based on results. From a messaging standpoint, I don’t really like that.”

City Manager Ben Siegel said the inflated number is due to escalating construction costs and the preliminary estimate being a “budget plug number.”

“I also think as we got further into the potential design, there was a desire to enhance other elements of the Community Center,” Siegel said. “It became more than just retrofitting the hall to fit a raised dais. We realized we needed to push out, and there were structural changes to the building.”

Other planned modifications intended for broader use factored into the increase, Siegel said. Hart said that “was a little mission creep in here,” a statement Siegel called “fair.”

“The projected cost in July 2022 for the City Council Chamber relocation was at $1.75 million,” Councilmember John Campbell said to Reischl. “Now, that’s changed. It’s gone up. I’m just curious. Your relocation projection didn’t include construction costs?”

Reischl said the previous estimate was “very preliminary” and made at a time when the project hadn’t yet been designed, and it was unknown exactly what the new facility would look like.

“The expansion was the most expensive option of things we were looking at, but that was not yet decided or approved by the City Council,” Reischl said. “As the design evolved, and as we actually received the bids, the number became firmer.”

Councilmember John Taylor, who works in the general contracting industry, said while the cost increase is “drastic” and one he’s “not happy” about, conditions in the industry are “crazy right now.”

“Construction people are busy. They’re bidding things higher,” Taylor said. “The bids tell the story. If there was a lower bid, you would have gotten one. We could go out to bid further, if we wanted to. We might not get the quality. Who knows? That’s always a dangerous thing to do.”

People in the San Juan community will like the new City Council Chamber and Community Center renovations, Taylor said.

Mayor Pro Tem Sergio Farias said the project went from using the Community Center as is, “with a couple more things,” to “realizing we can really enhance what that space does, not only for public meetings but private events.”

“It is a big number, and there is a difference within those numbers, but I think there’s an explanation,” Farias said. “There are significant increases in labor costs. There isn’t anything that looks unusual to me, as far as this goes.”

A new City Hall facility, separate from the Community Center project, incorporating affordable housing will also be built at the old City Hall site on Paseo Adelanto. City officials and staff have said the new City Hall building would not have adequate space for City Council meetings.

City Council meetings are being temporarily held at the Nydegger Building on La Matanza Street during the interim.

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Tags: City CouncilCity Council chamberCity of San Juan CapistranoCommunity CenterConstructionCouncil ChamberCouncil ChambersFeaturedmeetingsSan Juan CapistranoSan Juan Capistrano City Council
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Collin Breaux

Collin Breaux covers San Juan Capistrano and other South Orange County news as the City Editor for The Capistrano Dispatch. Before moving to California, he covered Hurricane Michael, politics and education in Panama City, Florida. He can be reached by email at cbreaux@picketfencemedia.com.

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