GILROY
– The City Council gave its unanimous blessing Monday night to a
construction bid for a $27.7 million police station at Hanna and
Seventh streets.
GILROY – The City Council gave its unanimous blessing Monday night to a construction bid for a $27.7 million police station at Hanna and Seventh streets.
Police Chief Gregg Giusiana and Assistant Chief Lanny Brown said they hope to see construction begin next month and finish by March 2006.
“It was a lot of work by a lot of people to get us here, and now it’ll be even more work – to keep this under budget,” Giusiana said.
Brown, to whom Giusiana gave supervision over this project years ago, said he was “excited beyond description” that the city is finally ready to break ground after several rounds of cost-cutting.
“We’ve gone through three evolutions of design,” Brown said. “Personally, the thought of going back to the drawing board is very fatiguing.
“And it will not be a Taj Mahal,” he added, referring to what critics have nicknamed the expensive new station, which will be Gilroy’s largest public building. “Everything we’re putting in here is of moderate quality.”
An indoor running track, a second level of underground parking and a radio/clock tower are among the items that have been cut from police station design plans in the past year, although plans allow for the tower to be built in the future.
At Monday’s Council meeting, Councilman Russ Valiquette made the motion to award the building contract to S.J. Amoroso Construction of Redwood Shores. It passed with a 7-0 vote. Amoroso is currently rebuilding Eliot Elementary School for the Gilroy Unified School District, and city staff said the firm met the city’s responsible-bidder requirements.
Amoroso’s $22.4 million bid, for construction only, was the lower of two bids submitted and opened July 23. It does not include “soft costs” such as construction management, a contingency budget, engineering, design and land purchases. With these included, a city-hired engineering consultant has estimated the total project cost at $27.7 million.
The money will come from impact fees the city charges developers.
The city had opened bids for police station construction once before, in May 2003, and was unpleasantly surprised to find that the low bid – from Amoroso as well – was $8.3 million more than their engineers had led them to believe. They were expecting $17.8 million but instead got $26.1 million.
That prompted a redesign that trimmed the bill by $5.4 million, including the clock tower and the second parking level. The project was still $4.3 million over its original budget, however.
Then in April, Council members were disappointed to hear that the rising cost of construction materials, particularly steel, had added approximately $2 million to the engineer’s estimate.
When the bids were opened, city officials let out a collective sigh of relief that the low bid was $250,000 less than the $28 million they had budgeted for this time around – although still more than $5 million above the prior estimate.
“If anything in the world has been talked about, it’s been this, and I think it’s time for action,” Councilman Bob Dillon said.
Mayor Al Pinheiro added, “We are taking that leap which I think people 20 years from now will be able to say, ‘Thank God the Council had the vision to give us this kind of facility.'”
