Councilmembers approved an additional $2.1 million for the ongoing Piedmont community pool project at their Monday night meeting. Construction delays related to underground fuel tanks, delays with PG&E, and weather (plus the discovery of an underground spring) have increased costs all around, city staff and the project managers said, necessitating additional contingency funds.
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The bulk of the funding — $1,113,450 for hard construction costs plus $500,000 for soft costs related to the delay — will come from unallocated, surplus dollars in the Facilities Capital Fund, the city said. The figure also includes $60,000 from Measure BB/Street Funds that will be used to repair Magnolia Avenue, and $100,000 for a pool site security system from the state COPS (Citizens Options for Public Safety) fund. The city also added Recreation building waterproofing for $35,000. (The building had a history of flooding; because Wickham was digging trenches for the pool project adjacent to the building, the city decided to take advantage of that proximity and have them do the work. It was originally budgeted as a standalone project for $100,000, the city said.)
The revised total project budget now stands at $32,100,000
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Barring any further delays, the timeline for the pool’s completion remains the same as it was in early June, the city and construction team said, with completion expected by December 2024 or January 2025, after which there will be 1-2 months of “commissioning” — testing the pool’s systems before opening it to the public.
As he noted in June, PG&E scheduling remains the biggest challenge, said Griffin Structures President Jon Hughes. He said they are aiming to have the electrical room ready for PG&E inspection this month, but that it could take up to four months to get a PG&E crew out from day of approval.
Project manager George Sanen also said the underground spring flooded some of the trenches being built and that complication has required extra geotechnical services and inspections.
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Photos of pool construction from the end of June courtesy of the City of Piedmont:
Technically the Facilities Capital Fund is “unallocated” but it was being stock-piled to pay for essential capital projects, not cost over-runs as it has been. This fund was created by depleting the Facilities Maintenance Fund two years ago, a fund dedicating over $1M/year to needed maintenance projects over the next 20 years. How will that now be funded? Was that pitch for maintenance just a facade?
With this discovery of an underground well one wonders whether geothermal heating of the pool was dismissed too quickly by the consultants.