Public Safety Buildings Project Update

Transcript (~3 min @ 35:53)

Speakers identified by voice; unnamed voices are numbered within this recording. Auto-caption text — verify against the video.

▶ 35:51 Jason Chen: Yes, I'd like to report on the recent developments in the public safety buildings, and also share my screen.

▶ 36:06 Jason Chen: I know it's a bit hard to see, but it's a good story. So phase one of the Public Safety Buildings Committee is to rebuild Engine 2 up on Tremont Street, and also the main headquarters, the main police headquarters. And so we've gotten quotes back and awarded the business for contractors, two different contractors for both of those buildings. And if you look here, the blue is what the construction quotes came back at from the general contractors. The yellow is the total project cost, the red is what we thought it would cost, and the only p- thing that's important is the green on the bottom. Mm. So we're $5.7 million below on about $61 million of buildings, so that's about eight or nine percent below, and that does include a 5% contingency.... So we've selected two good contractors. We- the process was in the summer and fall, we pre-qualified a number of these contractors. Anyone that came in with the lowest bid would be accepted by law, and we ended up with CTA for the fire department, or for, uh, Engine 2. They are- between our architects and our building project manager, our owner's project manager, Vertex, they've all had good relationships with CTA, and they've done a number of projects together. CTA's built a number of fire stations and police stations, including the one in Medford a few years ago. We also have Michael M. O'Connor as the police department, um, general contractor, and they also have a really strong reputation. So it's good to start this project off this way. We're gonna start neighborhood meetings and demolition probably in the next couple months. Um, and then we'll start the planning for Engine 3 over on the east side.

▶ 37:44 Speaker 12: Thank you, Councilor Chen.

▶ 37:45 Jason Chen: Yeah, and it's, uh, the cost reduction is partly due to both the chiefs and, uh, the, the board or the team reducing the scope and looking at what we really don't need in those buildings, and also due to, it's just a very favorable, favorable time right now for ch- commercial construction. So the contractors came back with pretty aggressive quotes.

▶ 38:09 Speaker 12: Thank you. Yep. Any other Rule 36 r- or Councilor Karamcheti?

▶ 38:12 Manjula Karamcheti: Oh, just wanted to make a comment, uh, related to Councilor Chen, uh, information. The Engine 2 neighborhood meeting that was scheduled for this week is now gonna be rescheduled for Thursday, March 5th at 4:00 PM with Ms. Gaffey.