Politics

Here's how contractors would phase courthouse-jail construction over 34 months

Architectural drawing shows existing courthouse and five-story addition (top), existing jail and addition, and new parking lots. [COOPER-HASKELL]

By Bill Moss, Published: September 24, 2023

If Henderson County commissioners greenlight a $215 million courthouse-jail expansion in the coming weeks, employees and visitors at the three-story existing courthouse would begin to see massive change starting in the first quarter of 2025.

New parking areas, construction fencing, heavy machinery and lots of dump trucks would become a daily part of a disrupted landscape on Grove Street between Second and Fourth avenues.

“Being that we're six square blocks downtown in a fully occupied facility, it was important that we made sure that we stay contained within our footprint,” John Albro, senior project director, told commissioners last Wednesday. “This is a very large project. It's very significant. We're going to be bringing in approximately 26,000 yards of dirt, moving 50,000 yards of dirt — all of this in an occupied, active urban setting.”

During the meeting, the construction management team made up of Hendersonville-based Cooper Construction Co. and Florida-based Haskell Co. presented commissioners a cost estimate of $215,032,100 for the courthouse-jail project, a figure that Albro acknowledged “might be little more robust than what might have been anticipated.”

County Commission Chair Rebecca McCall assigned commissioners Michael Edney and Bill Lapsley to work with the Cooper-Haskell engineers to identify cost cuts. Among the options are proceeding now on just one of the two renovation-expansion projects — the courthouse or jail — or finding other trims.

“In our preliminary analysis, we’ve identified some potential opportunities (to reduce the total price), and we'd be very eager to see how we could support that decision-making process by listening, hearing what your priorities are or understanding what kind of refinements or suggestions might be worth setting out,” Abro said. He floated two ideas. Of the seven courtrooms, “there might be some opportunities to shell those spaces out for future development.” An underground parking garage could be scrapped.

Cost of the courthouse renovation and five-story addition came in at $112 million. The detention center renovation-expansion would cost $51.2 million. Sitework was estimated to cost $118 million for a total construction cost of $175 million. Included in the number is design contingency of $17.5 million and cost escalation allowance of $10.6 million.

The “soft cost” of $40 million includes furniture and equipment $12.5 million, architects' fee ($11.9 million), construction-manager-at-risk fee and permitting fees.

Albro and Joe Tripi, Haskell’s vice president and market construction leader, presented details of the cost and timeline of the project. Here is how contractors would phase the renovation work and courthouse and jail additions over 34 months from early 2025 to October 2027:

• Phase 1A, 12 months: Interior renovations in order to relocate the public security entrance and secure judge parking to the south side of the existing courthouse, install construction site fencing around the existing upper north parking lot, add new fencing around sallyport expansion, complete the male housing sallyport and holding expansions, courthouse construction dried in.

• Phase 1B, 11 months: Complete detention center administration/booking expansion and adjacent sitework, complete courthouse addition, reduce construction staging area to begin phased construction of a new parking lot north of the detention center.
• Phase 2, 16 months: Begin courthouse renovation after occupancy of the courthouse expansion, begin detention center renovation shortly after completion of new male housing, construct female housing addition, complete sitework around the sallyport expansion.
• Phase 3, three months, remove temporary construction office, finish new parking area, vacate and restore offsite parking area.

Here are other highlights the project management team presented:

• Haskell used a “double blind” exercise to reconcile and verify its cost projection. Fentress Architects, an international design firm that provided conceptual planning and drew the preliminary design for the new judicial center, did its own estimate. Neither had access to the others’ data. Working independently, the two firms came within 2 percent of one another's numbers. “That gives the team assurance that we're all seeing the same things, interpreting the right things and making those adjustments to the estimate as necessary to ensure that we're all aligned,” Albro said.
• Construction escalation (inflation in labor and materials cost) is projected at 3 percent a year, 8 percent over the 34-month project duration, or $10.6 million.
• After “a full gut of the 98,000-square-foot interior,” the existing courthouse will be transformed into an office building primarily for nonjudicial administrative functions.
• The new five-story courthouse ($76 million) would include two superior courtrooms, five district courtrooms, a small claims courtroom and a shared courtroom.
• Detention center project includes renovation of 60,000 square feet, a new two-story, 50,000-square-foot cellblock for male and female beds, a four-cell holding area, new sallyport and new administrative offices.
• The $17.5 million set aside for design contingency is “essentially an insurance policy against scope creep, mission creep as the project develops,” Albro said.
• FF&E, or furniture, fixtures and equipment — “you to take the building and shake it, turn it upside down, and it's all stuff that’s going to fall out,” as the county’s Christopher Todd put it — is projected to cost $12.5 million, including technology and security equipment. That brought the total “soft cost” to $40 million and produced the grand total of $215 million. “It would be our hope as we move forward through this project that these numbers are at their highest point that we would ever show this board,” Todd said.