High bids slow center’s renovation

By Jeremy Twitchell

Thursday, Sept. 11, 2008 | midnight

Henderson's sweeping renovation of the Convention Center has been temporarily delayed after bids for the project came back significantly higher than the city had budgeted.

The city was planning to gut the Convention Center and rebuild it from within, then redo the facade to make the building fit in with the Art Deco theme the city has chosen for the Water Street District.

The City Council had set aside $10.3 million for the project, but the six bids it received from companies willing to do the work ranged from $12.4 million to $13.9 million.

"We were very surprised," said Henderson Construction Manager Mark Hobaica, who is also president of the Las Vegas chapter of the American Institute of Architects. "We had no idea that they were going to be that high … it was very disappointing."

Now, the city's project planners are taking another look to see where they can trim it back and institute cost-saving measures. They say they hope to put a new plan out by the end of the year. If the second bid is successful, Hobaica said the renovation will begin in spring 2009, about six months behind schedule, and last about a year.

Hobaica said the renovation plan may have become too complex for the city's budget — a problem he called "scope creep."

"It tends to happen when you create a project and you keep adding things to it," he said. "We've added a few things to this project and, in the last round, we may have added too much."

He said the city used an alternate bid structure, which allowed the bidding companies to break down the project and bid on the original planned renovation, then submit alternate bids reflecting some of the additions. But at some point, he said, there may have been a miscommunication.

"Maybe our cost estimator and/or our architects missed some things or maybe were a little too optimistic," he said.

Hobaica said it was difficult to reject all of the bids, because contractors put a lot of effort into preparing them, but said the city couldn't justify exceeding its budget by such a significant amount and would have to reassess its plan.

"From the city's standpoint, we look at budgets and work within the budget given to us," he said. "When we have a project like this that comes back over budget, it doesn't make sense to go out and try to find more funding or to take it from other projects."

Hobaica said the city will take another look at the size of the expansion of the building, which is planned to house offices for the Cultural Arts and Tourism Department, and a number of other areas, including the level of detail on architectural finishes both inside and out.

Many parts of the 26-year-old building will need to be replaced, Hobaica said, such as the lighting and ventilation systems. Other planned replacements, such as flooring and ceiling upgrades, may be simplified, he said.

The Convention Center remodel would be the fourth major redevelopment project to be delayed or put on hold in the past year. The other three projects — City Tower, Water Street Commons and Parkline Lofts — are private projects that were residential or mixed-use and delayed when the housing market began to struggle.

Henderson is already engaged in one major remodeling operation across the street from the Convention Center, where it is expanding its Justice Facility. That project is expected to wrap up next summer. An expansion of the Henderson Detention Center is expected to begin in July. That project is planned to last 18 to 20 months.

Jeremy Twitchell can be reached at 990-8928 or [email protected].