Is the new SFD building gold-lined?

In 2006, after some controversy regarding the site and the costs, Salisbury began work on its new fire station that’s slated to replace the downtown Station 16 and the training center on Isabella Street.

In recent days this issue was brought up again by Joe Albero and Salisbury News; also I recall there being talk about it on the “Robinson on the Radio” show. From my recollection, the new building is 30,000 square feet or so and will run about $9 million. This works out to roughly $300 per square foot.

I happened to be flipping through a magazine at work called Mid-Atlantic Construction and something in the Spring 2007 issue caught my eye. I actually went to their website (MAC is a McGrawHill publication, they do a lot of trade magazines in my field and also the Sweet’s Catalog) but they did not have a link I could access for the article. So I have a copy of the article in front of me.

It’s about a newly completed fire station in Roanoke, Virginia. This article is entitled “Variable Soil Conditions Don’t Stop Roanoke City Fire Station Team”, and here’s just a few of the pitfalls that affected construction of the building:

• Several rock seams were present on the site (with fairly unstable soil between), so a hybrid foundation of 30″ diameter Geopier elements supporting 90 kips each and helical piers that support 50 kips each was designed and built.
• Rubble from a previous building that collapsed some 50 years ago was found, including portions of the roof, foundation, HVAC system, and most importantly asbestos floor tile which needed to be remediated.
• There is an adjacent building to the site, which could not have its foundation disturbed. The fire station’s building footprint and parking take up most of the site.
• Because of the nature of the structural design, the strutural steel erection had to be coordinated and concurrent with the masonry erection. Generally steel goes up beforehand.

Regardless, the building, which had its groundbreaking in October 2005, took about 18 months to complete. Here’s the kicker. This 26,000 square-foot, three-story building which houses both a fire station and fire administration, ended up costing (are you ready?) – $4.8 million. By my calculator, that’s about $185 a square foot, and generally multi-story buildings on restricted sites cost more to erect than similar single-story buildings on an open site.

While I don’t have a Means Building Construction Cost Data book in front of me, (a book that breaks down construction costs by trade and material, it’s the Bible for construction cost estimators) it seems to me that $185 a square foot is pretty much within a reasonable percentile of average cost for a firehouse. I’m not sure if a link will work properly, but I went to the Means website and did a “quickie” cost estimate based on national averages.

For the building cost (assuming 30,000 s.f., 1 story, and union labor) I was given a range of $2.7 million on the low end to $3.8 million at the uppermost. Granted, I’m not assuming any administrative offices so it seems the Roanoke example is pretty much in line with expectations given that factor.

So why is the taxpayer’s bill here so expensive? It’s a question that should’ve been asked (and probably was), unfortunately the answers likely aren’t forthcoming.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer. View all posts by Michael