Waterfront woes

After learning the first phase of the city’s waterfront development plan will cost $8.6 million more than last calculated, Mayor Keith Hobbs is questioning whether or not project manager Katherine Dugmore was the right person to lead the way.

Hobbs, who said he will vote in favour of the increased budget when it comes before council Monday night, said he’s instructed city manager Tim Commisso to start micromanaging the project.

“We’re kind of at odds over whether the manager was the right person to do this,” Hobbs said during a news conference on Wednesday afternoon, addressing questions about what led to what amounts to a 31.5 per cent jump from the original $44-million budget approved for the project in 2007.

Commisso backed Dugmore, taking full blame for the extra costs, which should council approve on Monday night, would see the city take a $4 million dip into funds set aside to cover the new marina promised in the yet-to-be-funded second phase of the project.

“I have confidence in her and the team there to do this,” Commisso said. “We have a good team. We just have a very complex project and we’re trying to complete it by Oct. 31.”

Dugmore was originally scheduled to attend the news conference, but was later pulled from the agenda. She could not be reached for comment on Wednesday afternoon.

The report, prepared by Dugmore, suggests the tight timeline imposed by the federal government through its infrastructure stimulus fund played a huge factor in the cost overruns, compressing work schedules and calling for completion of the project two years ahead of the ideal conditions.

The federal government provided $29.3 million to the project, and initially called for the majority of the work to be complete by March 31, 2011. They later extended deadlines by six months.
 
The mayor and city manager also disagreed whether or not Phase 2 would even go ahead. About $1.1 million of the $7.3 million city portion of the Phase 2 budget remains intact.

“Not for now. In my mind right now it’s right out of the question. If we can get some dollars somewhere down the road, maybe. The public is going to be really upset about this. But again, we can all be armchair quarterbacks, but there’s no one person to blame here. City council voted for this, administration recommended this.

“Everyone went in with their eyes wide open. To sit back and say you were wrong, or that was wrong, I don’t think that’s the way we should go,” said Hobbs, who called the waterfront one of two boulders hanging around his neck entering office, the other being Horizon Wind Inc.’s $126-million lawsuit they filed last October, a week before the municipal election.

All told the city has committed $23.2 million in municipal money for the first two phases of the project, which will include a privately owned, yet-to-be-named hotel and two seven-storey condo units.  Thunder Bay’s Phase 1 contribution presently stands at $22.1 million, about $6.5 million more than the original budget set out in 2007.

The first-term mayor, who voiced reservations about the first phase Prince Arthur’s Landing portion of the plan during his campaign, said the time has come to take a leadership role, and while he knows groups like Friends of Marina Park will say a big, ‘I told you so,’ it’s time to look ahead and do what’s best for Thunder Bay.

Patty Bates, a FOMP member, said in an email she thinks taxpayers should be angry the city spent its infrastructure money on Prince Arthur's Landing, rather than address the $15-million infrastructure works deficit the city is faced with.

Bates said the city chose the site despite the knowledge the project wasn't shovel-ready and accused municipal officials of biting off more than they can chew.

"I have to question the competency of the people supervising this project," she said. "From what I'm hearing, much of the money being spent now is fixing problems due to poor management at the site.

"And why is Mr. Commisso speaking to this issue? Where's Ms. Dugmore or (Greg) Alexander, who were only too eager to request an additional $1.4 million in December, promising things were 'on budget and on time?'"

Hobbs said the city is left with little choice now but to push ahead.

“I don’t want to say we’re boxed into a corner, but we have to get this project done. We have some plans for this waterfront. I want to see a winter carnival in Thunder Bay, similar to the one that’s in Quebec City right now,” Hobbs said, admitting he doesn’t want to lose the infrastructure money and other matching funds provided by senior levels of government.

Northwood Coun. Mark Bentz, who chairs the waterfront development committee, said he wished he and the rest of council had a better inkling such a hefty overrun was coming.

“No one likes to hear an $8.6 million overage in the last part of a project. I’m told that administrators had been collecting data and they had a sense that it would go over, but they didn’t know for certain until now.

“I guess my questions will centre around could we have known earlier, and would that have presented us with more options in order to deal with this,” Bentz said. “In these economic times, $8.6 million is a significant amount of money that could be used in other areas of the community.”

Council will be asked to vote Monday on administration’s request.

They have been presented with a number of options to reduce the cost of the remaining 10 tenders, which Commisso couldn’t guarantee will come in under the projected budget.

Among the options are the elimination of screening enclosures and a public walkway between the privately owned condo buildings and the scrapping of security cameras and emergency call stations, which would cut $1.88 million from the budget.

The second cost-saving option is scaling back the market square design, replacing pavers with asphalt, the elimination of seating in the outdoor amphitheatre and other cutbacks. This option would save $2.5 million.

But he also reminded reporters that four of the first five tenders did come in under budget and that $3.5 million of the cost overrun has been allocated to a contingency fund, with more than $4 million slated for increased design and architecture costs.