North Branch library construction delayed

March 22, 2011 10:00 am by Frances Dinkelspiel

Bids to renovate the North Branch Library came in way over estimates. Photo: Frances Dinkelspiel

The bids to renovate the North Branch of the Berkeley Public Library came in so high that library officials are asking the City Council to reject them all.

The architects hired by the library thought it would cost about $3.8 million to renovate the historic building on The Alameda and add a two-story, 3,850 square foot addition facing Josephine Street, but the lowest bid came back more than $1 million over that estimate.

Library officials think that with a little tweaking of the design, the city can redo the building within its projected budget.

“We are disappointed but we are optimistic that we can bring the cost down,” said Donna Corbeil, the library director. “It’s important we stay within our budget.”

The library architects are going to revise the plans to use different, less costly, materials and look at other cost-saving methods, said Corbeil. There may have been some ambiguities in the bid documents in the way the addition was described and the architects will try and clarify that language as well. But the size and scope of the project won’t change.

“We don’t want to do a big redesign,” said Corbeil.

The changes will mean a two-month delay in the start of construction, which will mean a two-month delay in reopening the building. Library officials had hoped to start the renovation in April, but May looks more likely, said Corbeil.

Renovation of the Claremont branch will proceed on time as the bids for that project came in close to the budget, she said. Library officials will recommend on March 29 that city council accept the $3.3 million bid of FineLine Construction of San Francisco. That bid was about $70,000 over projected costs, she said. The Claremont branch should close soon and construction should begin in April.

The library received six bids for the North Branch renovation, with the lowest coming in at $4.2 million and the highest coming in at $4.9 million, according to city documents. But the lowest bidder apparently made a clerical error and pulled its bid, leaving the lowest bid at $4.8 million, about $1 million over projected costs.

If the city council rejects all the bids tonight, library officials expect to return with a new set in about a month.

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  • Zach Franklin

    A previous commenter on a library article speculated that between likely cost overruns at the North and Claremont branches and the lawsuit delaying the work on the South and West branches, that South and West Berkeley will lose out on our share of the bond money. Looks like so far that prediction is on track. :(

  • Bruce Love

    Zach, I think you mean me re that prediction. And, yup. This is not to say that those who filed the lawsuit were wrong to do so — I’m confident they were right (and so, at least on points already conceded, is the City). Rather, the neglect of South and West is located in a sloppy planning process and in scheduling those constructions later — thus securing the need for a legal challenge and ensuring a delay during which time the more attentively planned other branch renovations can drain the account.

  • max

    North and Claremont were scheduled first because they are clearly the less complex projects: the buildings (unlike West and South and Tool Libraries) have historic features that obviously should be preserved. So the community will get new branches more quickly than if the other two went first. The lawsuit (people) fear change and wants us flatlanders to continue to live with the tiny libraries we now must tolerate. People from Concerned Library Users skipped the whole public process, belatedly hired an architect to come up with designs that aren’t as good as what the community developed (and the city will have to pay for in a settlement no doubt). Not only do I fear that the less affluent parts of town will be neglected as a result of the group’s obstructions, I worry about what might happen if we have a Hayward fault quake during the daytime, for example in the middle of one of Nora’s sellout storytimes at West.

    This comment has been modified to direct criticisms against Concerned Library Users rather than the one person named as a member in the suit. She has asked that commenters not attribute thoughts and actions to her that are not true.