Experience Teaches a Very Bitter Lesson

Red-faced after major cost overruns on two municipal projects, city officials say they have learned their lesson.

Norman Carter, who is overseeing the city’s construction budgets as acting director of the Administrative Services Agency, said city officials have instituted procedures to guard against unexpected expenses such as those that have plagued the Police and Hale buildings.

For instance, when city officials began looking into acquiring the Pasadena Community Hospital building at 1845 N. Fair Oaks Ave. for senior housing and relocation of the city’s Health Department, they first hired consultants to provide a total assessment.

Costs of revamping that building range from $4.9 million to $7.8 million, including a $2.5-million purchase price, according to a consultant’s report. The city’s Finance Committee is still studying the idea for presentation to the Board of Directors later this year.

“We’re doing this right,” Carter said. “There’s a process now when we find a building.”

Meanwhile, the city’s other capital projects are on budget, Carter said. Fire Station No. 36 in Northwest Pasadena opened two weeks ago at a cost of $1.4 million, and construction has begun on the $2.6-million Fire Station No. 31 in southwest Pasadena.

In addition, city directors last Tuesday awarded a $4.8-million construction contract to Summit Builders for the two-story, 41,300-square-foot Villa-Parke Community Center in Northwest Pasadena, scheduled to be completed in March, 1992. The total cost of the project will reach $6.9 million, including landscaping, repairs to storm drains and a new parking lot.

However, the budgeted amount for the Villa-Parke center does not include furnishings, which were mistakenly omitted from the Police Building budget, and significantly drove up that project’s cost.

In the Villa-Parke project, the furnishings calculations were initially intentionally considered separately, Carter said. But City Manager Philip Hawkey plans to consolidate the project’s furniture expenses into its main budget to more realistically reflect its actual cost.

The city is also examining the idea of building a 60,000-square-foot office building on Ramona Street across from City Hall where a small park now exists, Carter said. The new office would provide space for the Water and Power Department, whose administrators are housed in leased offices in the Grosvenor Plaza and in an office building across the street.

“We have a serious space problem,” Carter said. “We’re leasing space all over the place, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

If the Board of Directors decides that the city’s space needs can be met only with more new structures, Pasadena could be building for the next 15 years. But with the changed city construction procedures and the planned hiring of a capital projects administrator to oversee all building projects, the days of financial pratfalls may be over, city officials say.

“We’re taking the proper steps to make sure that it doesn’t happen again,” Director Chris Holden said. “The board and the finance committee are on top of it.”

The committee is particularly interested in the recently opened Fire Station 36.

Committee members want to verify that the city came in on budget and on time on the project, Director Kathryn Nack said. If so, it will be used as a model--perhaps the only one now--of how to do things right.