It”™s no secret Orange County Executive Edward Diana would like to see the government center on Main Street in Goshen ground down into a sub-basement for a new county building. He calls its design “brutalist.”
Diana brought renderings, a Power Point presentation and his planning team to the Orange County Citizen Foundation”™s meeting room in Sugar Loaf this month to make his case for a new $114 million countywide government center to a standing-room-only crowd. He told his audience he was prepared to show how to get it done. “I”™m not a stupid person,” he said. “I get it.”
Armed with a staggering array of financial computations, he showed how renovating the several existing buildings around the county that comprise its governmental functions is going to cost approximately $57.5 million ”¦ and then some.
“Those are just the ”˜hard costs,”™” said Diana. “We also have to take into account ”˜soft costs”™like design, planning and other factors that go into a renovation, including relocating the workers in those buildings, leasing space for them, and then moving them back. When we add all that together, the cost to renovate the county”™s current facilities is close to $72.5 million.”
Instead, Diana has proposed the county tear down its current government center and consolidate 90 percent of the services spread around the county under one roof. Â “Even if we don”™t like the way it looks,” said Diana, “the (current) building is a disaster. It is inefficient, ineffective, leaky, eats energy in summer and winter and doesn”™t do anything for our growing county to meet its needs. No matter how much we try to fix it up, it is a bottomless pit eating our money and giving us nothing but headaches.”
Diana”™s proposal leaves the 10-year-old court building standing at its south side, but takes down the three building comprising the current government center in stages. By demolishing and building one section at a time, Diana told listeners, it would eliminate the need to temporarily relocate workers from existing buildings and then move them back to refurbished quarters. The current parking lot for the government center would become part of the new government center, and the first section to be built and added to the current footprint.
Diana proposes to build a multi-tiered parking garage where the former Orange County jail once stood. Once the parking garage is up, construction on a new building can begin. As the first phase is completed, workers can move into it and the second phase would begin. Again, as that is built, the third and last component would be taken down and the final building would be erected. The cost when all is said and done: $114 million, which Diana said he would work to get down to $100 million.
A request for proposals for a second feasibility study went out, and the county Legislature received 18 responses, from which it will pick one to go over the facts, the figures and the feasibility of Diana”™s plan. This will be the second feasibility study for the county at a cost of $200,000. “It may sound like a lot of money, but the Legislature is doing its due diligence,” said Diana. “None of us are looking to burden the taxpayers.”
As it is, said Diana, the county”™s debt service reduction through the life of the construction loan will offset any increase in taxes, save for one year ”“ and he proposed the increase would be so negligible he doubted that it would even be noticed. “And again, it would only be one year out of the 20 years of the life of the construction loan,” said Diana.
Diana also said with interest rates at historic lows, and construction trades in dire need of a jumpstart, the new government center would spur economic activity and create jobs. Architect Emma Gonzalez-Laders of Goshen asked who the county would hire for the construction. “This new center would be built under a Project Labor Agreement, which would mean decent paying jobs and put our local unions back to work,” answered Diana.
Gonzalez-Laders said she did not put in an RFP for the study; she and other architects are waiting to see if the building is approved by the Legislature and will then bid to build it. Diana said he wants a design that will blend in with the village”™s current architecture.
A new government center will not be put up for a public referendum. Rather, Diana is going to have to convince the 21-member Legislature. In order to proceed, 14 of them must cast an “aye” for the deconstruction of the old center and construction of a new one and accompanying tiered parking lot.
There”™s little doubt Diana will lobby fast and furiously for those needed votes, and that if his mission is accomplished, work will begin on constructing the new parking garage by fall 2011 or spring 2012.
