MARSHFIELD – During its Nov. 25 meeting, the Marshfield Common Council got an update on the police department renovation of the Wildwood Plaza building, 2504 S. Central Ave., Marshfield.
The matter was brought forward by Alder Rebecca Spiros.
“One of the things that Rebecca had requested was a financial update, and specifically, how much money had been spent to that point. And I did report, and it was in (Police Chief) Jody (Geurink)'s memo that we've spent $136,000 to date on that project in terms of design and engineering fees with our consultant, (BVK Group),” said Marshfield City Administrator Steve Barg.
“Subsequently, Council Member Spiros did ask for more information. She had had a conversation with the police chief, where he had, at one point, said to her that the initial preliminary estimate was around $12 million, which is more than the $10 million that the city had budgeted for this project.
“The city budget was $10.8 million with $800,000 being for the design engineering and $10 million for the construction.”
Barg said that it had been clearly expressed to the consultant that the $10 million construction cost was the city’s limit for the project.
“So, it's not for lack of knowledge of that that we're talking about a number that may be higher than the preliminary estimate,” he added.
“The third-party cost estimates that we have at the end of the schematic design phase, which is where we're winding down to, are between $10 .8 million and $13.5 million, so they are slightly above the estimate. And these kinds of cost estimates are usually, I'm told, within 20 to 30% accuracy.
“What we're really trying to get as we go forward is a guaranteed maximum price out of this process. So we're looking at getting a construction manager — somebody to be working on the city's behalf — get them on board as soon as we can, so that they can work with the plans before it gets to construction. Find ways to do value engineering, to save money, things that can be trimmed, cut, done differently.
“And you'll be seeing a request from us in the next few weeks to try and get an RFP for that very service, to get that process underway and get somebody on our behalf serving as our construction manager.
“We hope that this will find some savings for us as we go along the way, and then even to get the process of getting bids ultimately for the project. We do expect the market for construction procurement to be a little bit less stable in 2026.”
Barg added that city staff would continue to work to get the project within the scope that the council set, and that they will continue to provide updates to the council.
Alder Derek Wehrman agreed with the hiring of a construction manager, but said that they also needed to start looking at the basic needs of the project.
“I would say what we need to be doing, instead of worrying too much about cost, is we need to start planning for what our minimum viable product is. So, what is the base operational portion of the building? There were some bells and whistles or extras in there that we could probably do without,” Wehrman said.
“I know Jody and I kind of talked about this earlier in the project, and I would say that's what we should be doing right now, is figuring out what that's going to be. So if the bid does come in high — we say it's going to be $13 million — where can we cut that $3 million to get down and still operate effectively? Because in the next however many years, we can be doing fundraising, we can be doing sponsorships, looking for grants to help build out those extra portions. But, we still need to know what the base of the building is that they need to operate. And I think that's the only concern I have right now, is we're still looking at it as a holistic building, but there are parts that we could cut out, and we need to start looking at that before it gets too far down the pipeline. And then we can, you know, dial that back.”
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