Elevators to Nowhere – Construction Begins! Oh, Wait. No It Doesn’t.
Friends, here is another in a series of posts about Fullerton’s ill-fated “Elevators to Nowhere” series by “Fullerton Engineer”
In following the trajectory of the new elevator project at the Fullerton train station I have described a project that the public neither wanted nor needed, that had its genesis in the simple availability of “free money” way back in 2011 – six long years ago.
Although the design contract was let in 2013, the project was not bid until 2015 when the low bid came in 22% higher than anticipated. The construction contract was awarded anyway. With numerous ancillary “management” contracts, the project budget had grown to $4,000,000. By 2017 that figure had ballooned to an astonishing $4,600,000.
And yet construction didn’t start until February, 2016 and when it did it was only for some minor ADA toilet room modifications adjacent to the AMTRAK ticket office.
You can see in the project billing submitted by Woodcliff Corporation, the contractor, a few items related to bonds, mobilization and the bathroom work in February 2016 – a year after the contract bid. Nothing was billed against the elevator items at all, except for crediting the structural steel shop drawings for $55,000. Over 14 months later the structural steel has not been erected. In fact, the foundations for the steel structure haven’t even been built, as the site sits empty with minor demolition having taken place and some lighting conduit rerouted.
If any delay claims have been submitted by Woodcliff, those documents have not been shared, although delay claims are certainly coming, and escalation costs are already starting to accrue, although we don’t know how much because the costs were intentionally lumped together with other completely unrelated items in the March 2017 staff report.
As I noted in an earlier post the cause of all these delays is not known by the public because the Public Works staff doesn’t want the public to know that things have obviously gone wrong, very wrong; and, that the inexplicable and unexplained delays have finally cost the taxpayers of Fullerton directly. The money is no longer free.
— Fullerton Engineer
The knuckleheads moved a light pole out of the way of the foundation footprint on the south side – and put it a few feet from an existing light stanchion where it isn’t even needed.
Jeez, who’s running this mess? Anil Verma? Griffin Structures? Don Hoppe? Hello? Hello? Is anybody home?
And the rationale in the staff reports never changes – increased metrolink ridership. Well folks, it’s six years later. let’s see the numbers.
P.S. I’d like to know Shawn Nelson’s role in getting OCTA to pay for this nonsense. This sort of pork-waste is right up his lower alimentary canal.
Dont worry, be happy, Newman & Silva’s new gas tax will make sure the elevator project gets done over budget and not on time.
Wrap it up. This is boring.
Hoppe says there are “unforseen utility conflicts.” What? This is a City-owned site and the entire site was built during the platform construction in 1993-1995. How in God’s name could there be “unforseen” utilities, especially with all this money we’re paying “experts.”
Speaking of money, I want mine back.
If you knew any of the BNSF bull, you would know why the project was delayed Mr Fullerton Engineer
Yes, let’s blame the railroad always the go to answer for Fullerton’s incompetent staff.
Delayed 4 years?
Anything you say, Don.
Ha ha, almost 2 YEARS LATER and the thing STILL ISN’T DONE. Of course the boob responsible has conveniently retired as the highly pensioned incompetent boobs always do.