A Humbled Alhambra Hires Firm to Restore 2nd Fire Station

After a problem-plagued fire station project went $130,000 over budget and was delayed almost a year, officials say they learned a valuable lesson: Don’t bite off more than you can chew.

The city, acknowledging it was under-qualified to handle the nearly completed renovation of its 6th Street Fire Station, last week hired an outside firm from Century City to oversee a second fire station project.

By paying the firm, Century Program Management Inc., to manage the construction of a new $1.5-million station on Elm Street near Norwood Place, officials hope to avoid cost overruns and unnecessary construction setbacks, which bogged down work on the 6th Street station and forced firefighters to live in trailers for more than three years.

“We really don’t have anyone on board familiar with . . . (state) guidelines” for building fire stations, said Terry James, Alhambra’s director of public works. He admitted Alhambra should have hired professional help for the first project. “There is a large body of construction law that we are simply not familiar with at the staff level.”

Vangie Schock, an assistant to City Manager Kevin J. Murphy who is project manager for the 6th Street station, put it more succinctly: “We had problems with that little sucker.”

But professional expertise for the second station does not come cheap: The Century City management firm charges $19,500 for pre-construction work, $4,975 per month for project management and $55 an hour for on-site inspections. The City Council agreed to spend up to $104,200 for its services.

Citing safety hazards, the city shut down two of its four fire stations in 1987, shortly after the Oct. 1 Whittier Narrows earthquake, which measured 5.9 on the Richter scale. The temblor caused considerable damage to the Elm Street station; its roof separated from the rest of the building, and workers had to tear down the badly cracked tower that had been used for drying fire hoses.

The 6th Street station sustained only minor damage. Both had been built in 1930 of unreinforced brick.

A total of eight firefighters and three cadets from the stations were relocated to temporary living quarters on Valley Boulevard near Benito Avenue. Immediately, however, the city met with a host of problems.

Officials first disagreed on whether it was wiser to tear down the stations and rebuild them, or leave them standing and strengthen the interiors--a less costly undertaking.

Eventually, the city decided to repair the 6th Street station and build a new Elm Street station. Work on 6th Street began in September, 1989, and was expected to be completed by March, 1990, at a cost of $770,000. After that was finished, the Elm Street station would be demolished and a new building erected in its place--a one-year project with an estimated price tag of $1.5 million.

Funding the construction complicated matters further. At first, a federal disaster relief agency denied the city’s request for help in paying for the construction costs.

Alhambra appealed the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s decision, and the agency ultimately agreed to foot 75% of the bill for the new Elm Street station. The state Office of Emergency Services has pledged to make up the difference. Officials still are awaiting a federal decision on funding for the 6th Street station.

But Alhambra’s biggest construction woes began as soon as workers broke ground on the 6th Street renovation. When designing the repair work, the architect had to refer to sloppily drafted floor plans from 1930, which were “a nightmare” to read and terribly inaccurate, officials said.

Numerous discrepancies between the original blueprints and the actual layout of the station made it necessary to go back and change about 100 instructions in the repair plans, amounting to about $130,000 in extra architectural and construction costs, James said. The city had to pay for most of the mistakes, although the architect and contractor paid for some.

“It was mostly nickel and dime things--$500 here, $900 there,” James said. “There were vents that had to be relocated. Or once we got in and started . . . we found some conditions that required a lot more steel than originally called for. That was all an extra cost.”

Also, the city ran into problems with the project contractor, Corona-based The Gorham Company Inc. The construction company continually failed to pay landscape workers, painters, framers and other subcontractors, city officials claimed. And their workers often wouldn’t show up the next day.

Two weeks ago, the city terminated its contract with Gorham, citing unnecessary delays, and is charging the company $250 each day the project is delayed past a Nov. 29, 1990, extended deadline. However, the company’s president, Bob Gorham, blames the city and the architect, Douglas Bennett of Glendale-based Leach Mounce Architects. He said he plans to file a $283,000 lawsuit against Alhambra “for their incompetency and lack of direction.” He said he failed to pay his subcontractors only because the city failed to pay him; the city says it didn’t pay him because he didn’t pay his subcontractors.

With an outside construction management firm in charge, city officials said such conflicts will be avoided when work begins on the Elm Street station in March. In fact, they even hope to pull off a minor construction miracle: finishing two months early.

Free-lance writer Brad Haugaard contributed to this story.