By Brian Biggane
In a significant turn of events, South Palm Beach Town Attorney Ben Saver said at the regular Town Council meeting on July 9 that he was “cautiously optimistic” that negotiations with CPZ Architects of Fort Lauderdale would soon result in a design contract for the long-delayed Town Hall project. And he was right.
During a special meeting on July 30, the council voted unanimously to sign off on the contract.
Joe Barry, vice president of CPZ, told the council service would be divided into phases, the first being programming and site analysis. Other phases include schematic design, design development, construction documents and specifications, construction bidding and construction administration.
“We’ll move you forward at your pace,” Barry said. And his firm will have regular meetings with individual council members for their input.
Public input will also be sought, possibly through charettes.
“This is just a boilerplate, stuff just to get us going,” Vice Mayor Monte Berendes said of the contract. “All ideas are good ideas right now.”
Saver, who spent four months in fruitless negotiations with Moonlight Architecture of Cincinnati before the council approved a move to CPZ in June, said he and Town Manager
Jamie Titcomb had a “very productive” phone conversation with two top CPZ officials, including Barry, on July 1.
Saver said CPZ was asked to submit its fee schedule for the project, which he said he received the morning of July 9, hours before the monthly council meeting. His plan was to review it, incorporate it into a standard contract and send it back to be signed.
The council plans to start soliciting construction bids at its Aug. 13 meeting.
But the news wasn’t all good. When CPZ submitted its first designs for the project as part of its presentation last February, it based its drawings on a 10,000-square-foot building that would house council chambers, a coffee shop, administrative offices and a community center — costing about $400 per square foot.
Saver said CPZ, due to its cost increases, now estimates the project will cost $550 per square foot. With a $4 million total budget, Saver said the adjusted square footage would now be in the range of 7,000 to 7,500 square feet, or a building that would be up to 30% smaller than earlier proposed.
Council members said it was too early to get caught up in specifics.
“I think 7,500 is more than doable,” Berendes said, adding that the current Town Hall is just under 7,000 square feet.
“It’s premature to know what the cost is going to be,” Mayor Bonnie Fischer said. “I just want to make sure we’re still using SIPs,” or structural insulated panels. Barry, at the July 30 meeting, assured her SIPs would be used.
Council member Elva Culbertson had been reluctant to give up on Moonlight as she considered its expertise in SIPs to be superior to that of CPZ. Moonlight deals almost exclusively in SIPs while CPZ stated it had only a SIP manufacturer on its team.
Toward that end, the council still hopes to have Eric Schuermann, a SIPs expert based in Fort Lauderdale, brought in as its owner’s rep.
Fischer said she was also not happy with the initial design for the building CPZ offered in its February proposal.
“It’s kind of a Key West style, which to me that doesn’t flow with the town,” she said.
Berendes dismissed that, insisting it was “just an idea.”
Culbertson said her bigger concern was that, just as the cost of materials and workers has risen during the delays of the past several months, so will other costs associated with the project.
“We need to figure out all the expenses sooner rather than later,” she said. “For example, is it going to cost money to house the people who are going to be working here? That’s not five dollars. All of it costs money, and that’s not in the budget.”
Titcomb said it will be important going forward for the council to study the plans of how the architects allocate space, and Berendes agreed.
“We have to sit down with them and see things like, how big an office does Jamie need? How big is the restaurant? Maybe it’s 8,000, maybe 6,000. I would like it to be smaller, so we can afford it.
“We’ve done well financially. We’re in a good place right now.”
Mary Thurwachter contributed to this story.
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