Common Council Receives Library Project Update – Director Gazza Outlines Scope Reduction Plans

The Common Council met 11/02/2022. They received a 10-minute update on the Library Project.

Here’s a PDF of the full discussion transcript:

Director of Parks, Recreation, and Facilities Dean Gazza reiterated to the Council that the city’s goal was to remain within the established budget. Inflation, staffing shortages, and supply chain issues had increased costs for everyone, but whereas other communities had decided to pay the increased cost, Appleton decided to adjust the scope of the Library Project to keep it within budget.

They have been working with SOM (the architect) and SOM (the construction manager) to make changes that do not affect the library’s overall operation. Director Gazza mentioned a number of areas.

• A major potential change would be to reduce excavation which would help them save in every area of the project—concrete, excavation, hauling the soils, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, etc.
• They were also debating the use of steel versus wood, but had not made a final determination one way or the other.
• They were going to take a serious look at the geothermal plans for the site. (He mentioned they would be talking to the Council more about that in the future.)
• They would be recommending the outdoor children’s garden be removed.
• They continued to look at reallocating and consolidating the use of indoor spaces.

Once the scope and design were updated, they would come back to the Council and present their final recommendations for scope changes. Once those were approved, the design specs and drawings would be updated and then they would issue updated documents for bidding. They hoped to bring the bids back to the Finance Committee on 03/20/2023 and to the Common Council around 04/05/2023. Once approved, construction would begin soon after that.

He noted that although they expected inflation to decrease in 2024, even if the Fed achieved its goal of bringing inflation down to 2%, prices themselves would not come down. Rather they would just stop going up as fast from that point onward. Wages currently continued to increase, fuel prices were expected to remain high, and world conflicts would continue to have significant impacts on the economy.

Alderperson Chad Doran (District 15) had a couple questions.

The first was had the city learned any more about why some contractors didn’t bid and what changes they could make for the next bidding process to increase interest.

Per Director Gazza, there were a number of factors:

• Some contractors had too much work on their schedule and didn’t want to take more on.
• Some disliked the electronic bidding process and preferred the paper process. (Director Gazza mentioned that, although they had used to electronic bidding process for years, the city would be using the paper bidding process next time.)
• A lot of contractors were experiencing a shortage of labor.

Alderperson Doran also wanted to know if doing less excavation mean that they would be reducing the square footage of the library or were they looking at building more upward.

Director Gazza responded that that was up in the air right now. There was extra space available on the roof to build, so that was an opportunity, but nothing had been decided.

Alderperson Nate Wolff (District 12) asked if Director Gazza could talk more about the potential changes to the geothermal plans. Director Gazza said that they wanted find out what the costs would be.  He did not have an exact amount but thought it would cost around $1.1 million to install the system. That could be the difference between the project being under-budget or over-budget. However, there were also long-term reductions in operational costs associated with having a geothermal system that could make going over budget with the initial project worthwhile. Director Gazza himself mentioned that he thought it would be kind of foolish to remove the geothermal system from the Library Project.

View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=997432&GUID=1675D6C6-136E-4C49-B5DA-C665A7FBF628