By Martin B. Cassidy
Staff Writer
June 6, 2007
Steel girders appeared on Havemeyer Place this week as the
framework of the town's new police station begins to rise, and
town officials said construction of a new public safety complex
is on schedule.
"It's on time and there haven't been any unforeseen costs
during construction," town Superintendent of Building
Construction and Maintenance Alan Monelli said.
Bethel-based Worth Construction will finish the steel frame of
the police station by July, Monelli said, before erecting a
177-space parking garage on the site for public safety personnel
over six weeks between Labor Day and October, Monelli said.
The loss of parking due to the construction prompted the town to
assign police officers to park at Town Hall, to save parking for
shoppers.
"We're trying to get the garage open as quickly as
possible," Monelli said. "But in terms of sequencing
the building is going up right now."
Worth Construction began construction on the $32 million police
station in February, part of a three phase project to gather
police, fire, and emergency medical operations under one roof.
Since last fall, the entire police department has been relocated
across the street to the Police/Fire Building, until the police
department is finished sometime in 2009.
The complex will include a glass-and-metal public atrium and a
second-story footbridge linking a parking garage to the renovated
central fire station.
First Selectman Jim Lash said that URS Corp., the company hired
to oversee the construction makes a comprehensive report on
progress and any delays in the project regularly.
Earlier this year the town ended up spending more than twice what
had been planned to excavate the site, after finding that
contamination of soil on the site was greater than thought, Lash
said.
After awarding A. Vitti Excavators a $1.2 million contract to
excavate the site, the cost of moving 16,000 tons of contaminated
soil to a landfill brought the cost of the excavation to nearly
$2.9 million, according to town documents.
The contamination was linked to a Nash car dealership that
occupied the site before the police administration building was
built in the 1950s and gasoline tanks that were once used to fuel
police cars.
"We spent more of the contingency on soil removal then we
had hoped," Lash said. "But the construction is going
fine."
Board of Estimate and Taxation Chairman Peter Tesei said that
construction projects often entail unexpected cost increases due
to the cost of materials or other obstacles.
Tesei said Lash updates the finance board on the project's
progress periodically.
"Constructing a new building is a far greater task with a
larger scope of work involved," Tesei said.
The last phase of the project will be to renovate the 69-year-old
Police/Fire Building into a fire house sometime beginning in
2010.
Copyright © 2007, Southern Connecticut Newspapers, Inc.