Architect Denies Blame for Higher Cost of Convention Center

Complaining that he has been treated “like the villain in the black hat” because of cost projections for San Diego’s waterfront convention center, architect Ward Deems says that “simple human error, not . . . deceit” caused price estimates to be millions of dollars lower than construction bids.

“I’m a convenient target for all this hysteria,” Deems said. “I’m the prophet, I’m the messenger. Well, don’t kill the messenger.”

Deems, addressing criticism of him after convention construction bids came in more than $22 million over budget, also vehemently denied critics’ allegations that he failed--either inadvertently or intentionally--to keep San Diego Unified Port District officials apprised of potential cost increases.

“Any alluding to the possibility that we knew about (the cost increases) and didn’t tell (port officials) is fallacious,” said Deems, who heads a three-firm architectural team selected to design the 1.4-million-square-foot bay front structure on property adjacent to Seaport Village and the Hotel Inter-Continental.

“The experts we hired, and the Port’s own (cost) estimators, simply missed the mark. It defies logic to suggest we’d wait until now to uncover that. Hey, it’s going to cost us a hell of a lot more now, both emotionally and professionally, than it would have (earlier).”

The origins of the current controversy over the convention center’s escalating costs, Deems argued in a 90-minute interview in his uptown office, can be traced to what he termed “unrealistic milestones . . . from the very beginning” about both the project’s price and timetable.

During the November, 1983, campaign, in which San Diegans approved the proposed Navy Field convention center in an advisory vote, proponents attached a $95-million price tag to the project. While that estimate was based, in Deems’ words, on “very, very sketchy criteria” and a “stripped down, bare bones building” that bears little resemblance to the “world-class” facility now planned, the $95-million figure continues to be “a ridiculous yardstick” used to measure the project’s rising costs, the architect lamented.

“We had nothing to do with (developing) the $95-million number,” Deems said. “But that number . . . became formed in concrete, if you pardon a terrible comparison, and has been used as a political number ever since.”

After being selected by the port, Deems’ team, responding to city and port officials’ desire for more “pizazz” in the building’s design, prepared a $125-million proposal. That plan, later approved by the port commissioners, included a $101.5-million construction budget for the convention center itself.

Those price estimates were based, Deems explained, on a financial analysis prepared last fall by Federman Construction Consultants, a New York-based firm that Deems hired to review the project’s costs. Simultaneously, another firm retained by the Port, Hanscomb & Associates of Los Angeles, developed a cost estimate within about $2 million of the Federman projection.

“I think everyone felt comfortable--we certainly did--with the fact that two well-known estimators came up essentially with the same bottom line price,” Deems said.

Later, in February, Deems sent a letter to the port warning that the cost might rise by about $4 million as a result of “upgrades (and) things that were creeping into the (design) drawings” because of city building inspection consultants’ review of the project. That letter, Deems argued, demonstrates that he “carefully tracked” rising costs and “apprised the port of everything we knew about.”

The base bids received from six large construction firms last month, however, ranged from $123.9 million to $133.7 million--more than $22 million above the Port’s budget and far beyond the range of the cautionary note sounded in Deems’ letter.

That increase, combined with the cost of excavation, interior furnishings, utilities and other items, could push the convention center’s final price tag to more than $160 million, Port Commissioner William Rick has said.

After spending three weeks trying to determine the cause of the higher-than-expected bids, Deems said that he now believes that the projected cost increase includes about $11.7 million in additional steel and concrete expenses, about $5.8 million in contractors’ overhead and profit, and $5.5 million in other unidentified costs.

Through “basic human error,” both his own cost estimation consultant, as well as the port’s, “were off the mark,” Deems said. The higher overhead and profit figures, Deems explained, may stem from “the apparent risk that the contractors see” in the complex project.

Indeed, Deems complained that some critics have tried to make him a scapegoat for all of the convention center’s problems, financial and otherwise. Deems also stressed that his team’s fee has already been set and will not rise even if the project’s overall cost increases.

“This thing has become so personalized, that it looks like there was only one guy, that I was sitting in a dark room, just drawing like crazy and throwing numbers out the door,” Deems said. “It’s been hellish.

“It’s affected my family, it’s affected me and who knows what else it’s affected. I guess time will tell. One doesn’t like to be sued for things that you think you’ve done right.”

That last comment refers to a lawsuit filed last week that charges Deems participated in a scheme to conceal the project’s rising costs from the public.

That suit, filed in Superior Court by San Diego lawyers Michael Aguirre, Gary Aguirre and James Eckmann, also is aimed at insuring that public funds are not used to cover the millions of dollars in projected cost overruns for the convention center. The Port District and HuntCor Inc. of Phoenix, the firm excavating the 11-acre site, also are named as defendants in the suit.

Two task forces, one at the Port and the other appointed by acting San Diego Mayor Ed Struiksma, currently are studying possible ways to cut the project’s costs without further delaying a construction timetable already six months behind schedule because of water drainage problems that have slowed the excavation.

Deems has recommended that the Port immediately proceed with the project despite the higher costs, and later seek to negotiate price reductions with the contractor.

“This town has a history of never quite coming up to the mark, of falling short of coming forward and doing something in a major way,” Deems said. “That’s beginning to change . . . This may help show how much we’ve changed.”