Construction costs are certainly rising (Web Link however that does not account for the 25% increase in total cost. Likewise, the $300k mentioned above does add to the $4.25m, but neither that nor the labor cost increase explains the $4.25m overrun.

MV - can you publish more details on the plan cost and the deltas that lead to the $4.25m

$21 million for 6,800 square feet comes out to over $3,000 PER SQUARE FOOT for a *rennovation* (ie., they already had the basic building, land, utilities, etc.)

Holy boondoggle, Batman!

It will probably cost 42 million by the time it finally gets done. Have to love Union labor.

@USA

It sounds like $2.6M of the $4.2M was a staff error/omission. So, the apples-to-apples increase was $1.6M on a base of $21M...roughly 8%.

Rich -- the addition of the 6,800 square feet of space is just part of the work that also includes updates with the existing space and grounds.

This is "park in lieu" money, money assessed and collected from developers who are putting even more park pressure on our shortage of park space, that was re-appropriated (stolen) from areas throughout the city, to build buildings and new offices for city staff.

Simply put, Park and Rec City staff is diverting (stealing) money collected under the sacred cause of buying much needed park space and using the stolen money to build themselves new and more offices.
I hope this paper brings this fact to glorious light!

@USA: The existing community center appears to be about 11,000 square feet. Add 6,800 new square feet and we're spending about $1,200 per square foot, or about 3 TIMES what it would cost to build a really nice, multi-story luxury home with all the trimmings, but we're only building single-story with mostly large, open rooms and (presumably) little in the way of luxury trimmings, and over 1/2 of the building is already there.

Ouch.