Auburn’s Teen and Community Center is about to move from design to construction.
On Monday the Auburn City Council awarded to Pease Construction, Inc., of Lakewood, the $5 million contract to build the multi-generational center. The total contract is $4 million under the $9 million for which the City had budgeted. Pease’s low bid before sales tax was $4.6 million.
Construction should start in August and wrap up by June of 2016.
Jacob Sweeting, project manager for the City of Auburn, said the City had received eight bids, and Pease’s was 19 percent under the insurance estimate.
“Good news,” said Stan Lokting, principal of Seattle-based ARC Architects. “We get to move forward with a really great project.”
Lokting had the following to say about Pease.
“During the bidding process, they by far asked the most questions of any of the bidders who were interested in the project and the suppliers who were interested in the project. They are incredibly thorough. Their estimator took the bull by the horns and went through the documents carefully.”
Now, what will Auburn’s residents get?
A community and youth center at the north end of the Les Gove Community Campus, offering about 21,000-square feet of building space for educational, cultural, and social activities. The emphasis will be on creating spaces to attract teens and on encouraging cross-generational interactions with the Auburn Senior Activities Center next door.
This will be realized by renovating the City’s existing Parks, Recreation and Arts Administration Building — about 7,100 square feet — and adding some 13,700 square feet of new building space.
Councilman Rich Wagner, long the project’s champion, was all smiles.
“The community center project has been a long one. They began working on it five years before I got on the council, which was 30 years ago, and it has come to fruition in a better form than I could even have imagined,” Wagner said.
Councilman Bill Peloza reminisced about the project’s long road to get to this point.
“Way back when, when we started looking at this project, we started out on the south end of Les Gove Park, and we were running into some concerns about that location. But when the idea was born to bring it to the north end and upgrade the existing Parks and Recreation building, it was a no-brainer to do that,” Peloza said.
“A fantastic building, and a bid that came in that was just astonishing,” said Councilman Claude DaCorsi.
The council authorized a 15 percent contingency fund to account for potential change orders, claims and additions, allowing construction to proceed without delay in the event of unforeseen conditions requiring contract adjustments within the authorized contingency amount.
