Deja Vu All Over Again

Many things happened last night when the Common Council held its informal meeting at the Central Fire Station, but predictably the Register-Star reported on only one: the bids on the police and city court building, which were almost twice what the City has to spend on the project. John Mason reports on the discussion the took place last night: "Police/court bids come in $1.5 million too high."

This has happened before, when the City tried to undertake a capital project on its own. Back in October 2012, the project was a senior center--a new building to be appended to the Youth Center at Third and Union streets. The City had $780,000 to construct it, and the lowest bids came in at slightly more than $1.3 million. In that case, the Galvan Initiatives Foundation stepped in and offered to create a senior center for Hudson in the Armory, and the City gratefully accepted the offer and abandoned the notion of building a new building. Two and a half years later, there is still no senior center. Given the experience of the senior center, one cannot help but wonder if, in the wake of this setback with the police and court building, we'll see another iteration of the Galvan Civic Hudson project.

Back in July 2012, when the Civic Hudson project, which plunked two floors of "permanent affordable housing" on top of two floors to be leased to the City for its police and court facility, failed to get its sought-after funding, the Galvan Initiatives Foundation was reported to have said that it would "continue to attempt to develop Civic Hudson as a Police and Court house facility . . . [either as] 'a stand-alone facility or in combination with moderate income housing or other community facilities.'" Some may remember that long-time mayor Rick Scalera, now Fifth Ward supervisor and a "special adviser" to the Galvan Foundation, has for more than a decade wanted to build a police and court building on the corner of Columbia and Fourth streets.  

The plan now being pursued for the police and court building is to reject the bids immediately and go back to the drawing board to "value engineer" the project and bring down the cost. Before going out for bid, the project had been analyzed three times by independent pricing services, and all three analyses indicated that it could be done for $1.7 million. Unfortunately, according to Alderman Nick Haddad (First Ward), who has been the point man on the Common Council for this project, the cost analysis was done before the final design was created by the architect working directly with the Office of Courts Administration and the Hudson Police Department, and the plan that resulted, including a lobby estimated to cost $250,000, which had not been part of the original plan, did not reflect the budget. Although admitting to being disappointed with the bids, Haddad seems optimistic that compromises can be reached to bring the plan back within the budget constraints. He characterized the setback as "part and parcel for the course in this kind of project."
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