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On Wednesday the Permanent Building Committee (PBC) met to discuss, among other items, the updated timeline for the Fairbank Community Center. We last reported that the Owner’s Project Manager sounded the alarm about a delay on the move-in date because Eversource had yet to bring permanent power to the building.
At the time of the last meeting it sounded almost dire, but as of Wednesday they’re targeting a December 14 move-in to the new building. That’s not nearly as extreme as some viewers may have inferred from the tone of the last discussion, though the contractor is still not making a firm commitment to turn the building over by that date, citing that they have delays getting gas to the building. The good news: they do have permanent power now. (0:02:00)
Once again, the PBC voiced frustration that the move could be delayed by forces that are completely out of their control, but on the whole it appears they have avoided the worst case scenario in a project that has thrown curveball after curveball at the project team. User groups may take some comfort in knowing they’re only talking about delays in terms of a few weeks, as the national trend in recent years has been considerably more extreme. Even in a pre-pandemic study, McKinsey reported: “Large projects across asset classes typically take 20 percent longer to finish than scheduled and are up to 80 percent over budget.”
From a financial perspective, they’re getting low on contingency funds, as has been reported in other meetings. Several committees have been discussing Article 7 for Fall Town Meeting, which would replenish their contingency funds with $900,000 to ensure they can finish the project. Article 6 is for design funds for the Atkinson pool, which is a separate project that was not part of the scope of the Community Center project, but has also been a big part of discussions in committee and board meetings.
Image: Town of Sudbury, June Update
Those articles have been recommended/supported by the Capital Improvement Advisory Committee and the Park and Recreation Commission. The Select Board and the Finance Committee have yet to take a position.
Some members of both the Select Board and the Finance Committee had previously asked for a breakdown of all the funding that has gone into the project to-date. The Town delivered that information to the Select Board last week, and it shows that the project has received additional funding that amounts to about 10 percent of the original project appropriation of $28,832,000 at Annual Town Meeting in 2020. (Page 150)
The top-level numbers don’t tell the whole story. The project has only received about two percent in additional funding from Town Meeting articles; a shockingly small amount considering the pressures construction projects have been facing in recent years.
The vast majority of additional funding arrived by way of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) allocations by the Select Board. That money got to the Town via Federal legislation designed to aid in the economic recovery from the pandemic, which was one of the root causes of supply chain disruptions and cost escalations that have impacted the Community Center project from the start.
For comparison, the Lincoln Squirrel recently reported that the 2018 concepts for the Lincoln, MA community center went from an estimated $15 million – $16 million at the time to a whopping $25.4 million in a 2021. But another estimate this year found the original concepts would cost $30 million because construction costs increased more year-over-year than anticipated. In other words, the cost to build the original concepts from 2018 doubled in five years. Lincoln is now working through a variety of designs that are broken out as percentages of the $25 million estimate.
By contrast, the Fairbank Community Center has received just 10% more than its original appropriation during a similar timeframe, and the value engineering done on the project was not as drastic as many of the options being considered in Lincoln. That’s likely due, at least in part, to the fact that Sudbury was able to get the community center project started years earlier and kept it moving forward during the peak of the pandemic.