City of Monroe moves forward with expansion of Opportunity Center, Navarre Library

Monroe City Council this week approved contracts with three different firms who will work on the expansion and renovation of the Opportunity Center at Arthur Lesow Community Center, and the adjacent Navarre Library.

Council unanimously approved an agreement with Kohler Architecture, surveying firm Anderson, Eckstein & Westrick, Inc. (AEW), and Auch Construction for architectural, engineering and construction consulting services for the schematic design of the expansion and renovation of the two adjoined facilities. The total contract cost between the city and the three firms is in an amount not to exceed $90,855.00, but a total of $95,000 was encumbered for this phase of the project to address any incidental costs that may occur.

City of Monroe website:Agenda and meeting packet for Sept. 19 council meeting

Patrick Lewis,  the city’s director of engineering and public services, explained that while city funds are being appropriated for this part of the project, the hope is that the city will eventually be able to reimburse itself using a portion of the $7.8 million that the State of Michigan has earmarked as an appropriation for the overall renovation and expansion of the two facilities.

"We're still stuck in a little bit of limbo here," Lewis said. "We did get the $7.8 million earmarked funds from the State of Michigan, but we're still waiting to hear which agency is going to administer those, and who our contact person is there. We're a little bit nervous that that process may take a few months to get sorted out, and the concern here is possibly missing the window for maybe getting footers in the ground and starting construction in late 2023. So there is sort of a calculated risk going on here to assigning some city funds to this project, because the concern is by waiting an additional year on this we may be in a situation where the construction (cost) escalation will far outpace the allocation of city funds to this project on the front end.

"So that's why administration solicited a proposal from Kohler Architecture for the schematic design to get us to the point where we know the full scope of the project and can begin moving forward with the detailed design."

Auch Construction served as the city's construction manager during the erection of Monroe's new Central Fire Station, which was completed in Fall 2019. Lewis said that city administration found it advantageous in that instance to have Auch on board from the very beginning of the project, and they believe the same will hold true for the re-imagining of the Opportunity Center and Navarre Library.

Earlier report:Opportunity Center opens sharing garden

"They can do various cost analysis, give us, I'll say, the constructability side of things, and potentially even start to do some value engineering before we've even started to lay the building out," Lewis said. "We think that will be very advantageous. They've indicated a willingness and excitement about working with Kohler and Kohler expressed the same with them."

AEW will perform a topographic survey of the site. The firm was the surveyor and civil engineer of record on the recent renovation and expansion of Labor Park, which sits just next door to the Opportunity Center and Navarre Library.

"They've already got a lot of the base drawings in their CAD (Computer-Aided Design) files," Lewis said. "So it was  a natural fit there."

Monroe City Mayor Robert Clark reiterated that the city is taking a calculated risk in moving forward with this project while it waits to receive the appropriation from the state.

"We've moved forward with this project over the months, we as council have embraced and supported this and understand the benefit to the community, and we also understand the cost analysis done on this," Clark said. "...We're not sure, at this point, which state department is going to be managing (the appropriation) that we will work with as this come through, but getting this started, this work being done and being ahead of this, on October 1 when the state budget comes in and it is designed, then we are getting further into the timeline to make sure that we can procure the contracts and start development."

This article originally appeared on The Monroe News: Renovation contracts approved for Opportunity Center, Navarre Library