Cost of office rehab rising

An office building Shelby County bought and is remodeling has several unexpected problems, which has added some to the costs.

The Northside Courthouse Building at 18 W. Polk St. is the former office of local lawyer Robert Marshall.

The county is in the process of revamping it to take Shelby County Community Corrections out of the cramped, crumbling house it's in now and give the public defenders' office a more professional space.

The county bought the building in March 2011 for $207,500, and the cost to remodel is up to $457,000 and rising, all paid out of the county's racino fund.

"We felt like we could do it a lot cheaper than we could," County Commissioner President Tony Newton said. "It has turned into a more expensive project than anybody ever anticipated."

Costs rose as safety features and different materials were added into the mix. After being awarded the bid at $446,000, the contractor, Runnebohm Construction of Shelbyville, found that the building had several structural issues, including a missing support wall.

"The support system for the building had been removed over time," said Chris King, executive vice president at Runnebohm. "Once we got into the walls, we started finding a lot of unknown conditions."

Another problem was a time-consuming dig through several layers of floor, evidently built on top of each other, to get to a sewer main that had to be replaced.

King said Runnebohm has had success mitigating some of the unexpected costs by reducing costs elsewhere in the project. He said the company employed what they call value engineering to find ways to save money on the project, so that unexpected issues wouldn't derail the project. The fix for the structural projects was $30,000, but that was mitigated by $19,000 in cost savings, such as keeping parts of the sidewalk and modifying the reception desk instead of building new.

That places the cost at $457,000, plus $20,000 added Tuesday at the Shelby County Council meeting to install phone lines, fiber optics and other repairs, adding up to $477,000.

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Cost of office rehab rising