City officials have learned what it’s like to renovate a 100+ year old building, and the unwanted surprises that come with it. On Tuesday night, the City Council approved a $373,000 budget transfer to cover the cost of unexpected additional repairs, as well as to insulate the Parker Annex.
The former elementary school on Watertown Street opened in 1914, and was sold by the Town in 1986. In 2022, the now City of Watertown bought back the building, which has been turned into office space.
Since then, the City has been planning to turn Parker in to a City Hall annex, and hired contractors to renovate the building. As ceilings and floors have been removed, some surprises were exposed, said City Manager George Proakis.
“We found stuff under floors we didn’t expect, and we opened up spaces and found things weren’t there that we had expected,” Proakis said.
One thing they found when the ceiling was removed, was another ceiling, said Denise Maroney, the Director of Public Buildings.
“Some of those ceilings have asbestos in them, and especially up on the third floor for moving materials that have fallen onto that area,” Maroney said.
Digging up the floors of the bathrooms, Maroney said, they received more unwelcome news.
“So, just the bathrooms alone are a change order of over $320,000 for unknown conditions and plumbing that was not code that we’ve had to change and do it the right way,” Maroney said.
The additional money goes above the $15 million original price tag for the Parker renovations, which included a 15% contingency.
“It’s essentially covering two areas: one is an increased cost for the original project scope of $288,000,” Proakis said. “And the second is, you may remember, we authorized some borrowing to address some environmental issues in the building, particularly some issues with the finance with providing better insulation, and it looks like there’s about an $85,000 supplemental funding needed to cover that particular issue.”
Councilor John Gannon asked whether this was a case of a contractor submitting a low bid and then adding cost with extra projects, known as change orders.
“I’m not saying anything happened here, but it’s something we’ve had a great success, and credit to everyone in the City involved in school projects and city projects, but things happen,” Gannon said. “So, I would just appreciate what got us here, and we’re going to have a wonderful building when this is all done, but I would just like to assure us that that cost recovery will be reviewed.”
Proakis said that he does not think that was the case at the Parker Buidling.
“This contractor’s bid was not way below others,” Proakis said. “From what I recall, the bids that came in were pretty well clustered around the same set of numbers, which leads me to believe that we didn’t get the guy who was playing games with us and trying to chase change orders.”
Gannon also asked whether some of the unexpected conditions should have been caught before work began. Proakis said contractors went through the building beforehand.
“There were points where the architect made an assumption — maybe it may be a reasonable assumption, maybe an unreasonable assumption — that floors in different rooms that were being combined were at the same elevation, and then when you pull it out, you find that they’re not,” Proakis said. “Or bathroom floors didn’t have all of the bricks from the old building thrown in as trash between the floor joists, and you dig the floor up and suddenly you find a pile of junk in the middle of it that takes hours to clean out. There was just one surprise after another in that building.”
Councilor Theo Offei asked what the City has learned that can be applied to future projects.
Proakis said that the high school project has remained on budget. City Council President Mark Siders added that there were some unexpected conditions found behind walls and ceilings when Watertown renovated Lowell Elementary School.
Maroney said that the City might add more to the fund for cost overruns.
“I think from what I’ve learned in talking with (City Auditor) Megan (Langan), we would do a 20% contingency on a building like this, instead of being conservative and going with 15,” Maroney said.
The Council unanimously approved the $373,000 transfer.