Los Altos Hills looks at ways to cut $500,000 from project
By Lauren McSherry, Town Crier Staff Writer
After construction bid results for the new Los Altos Hills town hall exceeded the budget by $500,000, Los Altos Hills planning officials are scrambling to reduce building costs on the new town hall building.
Anthony Mirenda, CEO and president of TBI, the firm in charge of town hall construction, attributed the high-than-expected bids to several external factors: Material costs have gone up because of the war in Iraq and China’s increased demand for building materials; and the price of diesel, labor costs and workman’s compensation have also increased, he said. “What’s basically happened is we’ve seen unprecedented escalations,” Mirenda said. “We’re almost seeing a perfect storm. Everything has gone up.”
Rather than siding the new town hall with redwood or cedar, two expensive building materials, TBI is looking into using other types of wood or fiber-cement products that look like wood.
Redwood and cedar also cost money to maintain in the long term because they must be stained every 2-3 years to prevent weathering and sun-bleaching.
Fiber-cement siding receives paint well, replicates the appearance of wood, is durable and does not warp from moisture, Mirenda said. Pine siding is not being considered, but other fir products are, he said. Fiber-cement would cost approximately 20 percent less than redwood or cedar, he said.
TBI also determined that plans for the council chamber’s lighting system, first reported to cost $50,000, had been misinterpreted by bidders and should instead cost between $4,000 and $7,000.
The donor wall is also being rebid. The section of wall that would surround the heritage oak tree in front of the town hall was added to town hall plans after TBI estimated that construction of the donor wall would cost $40,000.
The addition of the wall drove bids up to $100,000, Mirenda said. The wall surrounding the heritage oak has been eliminated from town hall plans.
Stiffer geotechnical codes also drove up the cost of the town hall foundation, Mirenda said.
New bids on concrete, wood framing, finishes and earthwork, which came in June 9 $500,000 over budget, will be presented to the city council July 14.
“Hopefully we will have some good news at that time on the budget,” said Mayor Pro Tem Breene Kerr at a special meeting of the planning commission June 22.
The estimated cost of construction for the new town hall is $3,049,193. The city’s budget for the town hall is $3.4 million.
“Until we are well into the town hall, we really won’t know how much it is going to cost,” said Mayor Mike O’Malley at the June 16 city council meeting.
