The downtown parking garage controversy will fill the newspaper here for at least another year as both sides begin the long battle. As an interested observer I try and see both sides. After all…I don’t live in Chico. But when you’re dealing with bureaucracies you can’t be impartial for long. And what have the bureaucrats done so far? They have spent about $120,000 on studies and consulting. They will spend at least another $350,000 before they are ready to commission an Environmental Impact Report. OK, so it’s about half a million dollars and nothing much has happened in a material way. Lot’s of paper though!
It should be mentioned that someone has asked, why doesn’t the University build a parking garage? The answer was that the University is looking at the possibility of building a parking structure, but their bureaucracy moves even slower than the city’s and it would be 5 to 10 years before it could even be dreamed of. What? Was that an excuse?
And I read that the final bill for this parking structure will be $12 to $13 million dollars. And it will take at least a year to build. Now you may remember a previous posting where I wrote about the $3 million dollar footbridge across the Sacramento River that quickly became a $9 million dollar boondoggle across the river when the bureaucrats finished with it. I would guess that is the scenario that you can expect here as well.
Oh, oh…History lesson. Back in the days when I was a construction estimator, it was known that when bidding on a government project you were entering dangerous and costly areas. And to price your bid accordingly. For instance, I bid on some office buildings at Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, an affiliate of the University of California. Office walls, ordinary walls…had been so over-designed that I had to price them at over $300 a lineal foot. Compare that to a private sector price for a similar wall of just $35.
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