Phase II of project comes in $628K over
By Ethan Smith
Published in News on April 12, 2016 1:46 PM
Phase II of Goldsboro's Streetscape project, which renovated several blocks of the downtown area and finished in October 2015, came in $628,361.30 over budget.
Originally, the project was projected to cost $15,484,889, but wrapped up with a final price tag of $16,113,250.30.
In order to pay for the more than $628,000 difference in cost, the city has allocated $536,372 from the city's utility fund and $91,989.30 from the city's general fund.
The extra costs for the project came in the form of more than a dozen different change orders for items such as undercut excavation, water line replacement, additional street paving, installation of underground utilities and more.
Two of the changes orders made up the bulk of the additional costs, with one for "additional work not a part of unit pricing" at $192,524, and the other for water line replacement on Mulberry Street at $141,701, for a combined total of $334,225 -- or more than half of the additional costs.
Assistant City Manager Randy Guthrie said the change order that listed "additional work" called for extensive ductile iron and gasket replacement work to be performed underneath the street.
"This was the situation where there were some areas we dug in came across a petroleum smell, so we switched to ductile iron and a special kind of gasket, so in case there was more of that petroleum smell present it would prevent the petroleum from dissolving or interacting with the lines," Guthrie said.
"It would be fine being exposed to that, but if there was enough petroleum it could impact life span and life of the gasket, so we went with a longer lasting and more durable material."
Replacing the water lines on Mulberry Street became a matter of needing to increase water volume and pressure in the lines, upfitting the lines from 6-inch lines with low water pressure to bigger lines with higher water pressure.
To complete the project, the city received $10 million in Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) V Grant funds from the federal government. Initially, the city put up $3,590,551 as a local match -- funding that came in the form of a loan the city will need to pay back -- and utilized $1,588,054 in Goldsboro-Wayne Transportation Authority Federal Transit Administration funding and spent $306,284 from the city's utility fund.
The final price tag for the three separate projects completed under the Streetscape Phase II umbrella is:
* Center Street Streetscape work, $7,888,459.85.
* Walnut Street Streetscape work, $2,991,249.75.
* Goldsboro-Wayne Transportation Authority Transfer Facility, $5,233,540.70.