City Tables Benjamin Barnes Branch YMCA Talks Until Next Week

TUSCALOOSA, AL — Members of the Tuscaloosa City Council's Public Projects Committee on Tuesday opted to table a measure proposing the city contract with a Mobile-based firm for owner representation services and program management for the new home of the Benjamin Barnes Branch YMCA.

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As Patch previously reported, the professional services agreement with Volkert, Inc. would be in the amount of $454,200, with the firm then moving forward on negotiations regarding the scope and fee of the project, which will see a new facility built on the McDonald Hughes Center campus in Tuscaloosa's West End.

In total, the $10 million project will be funded primarily through a $9.5 million bond issuance for fiscal year 2023 under Elevate Tuscaloosa and half a million in cash from city coffers.

Associate City Engineer Bryan Gurney addressed members of the committee on Tuesday and fielded questions that primarily focused on the overall cost of the project and the need to hire an outside firm to handle owner representation services to ensure the facility reflects the desires of its various stakeholders.

'We're proposing to bring on Volkert, who's an industry expert in delivering a project like this, a facility with multiple stakeholders that can create complexity," Gurney said. "Volkert would serve to shepherd the project from the preliminary stages all the way through construction and keep monitoring and management of the budget and the scope and the quality of the project."

Gurney said this proposed layer of owner representation would not only guard the budget and quality of the project, but would also see the outside firm immersed and focused on making sure meets all of the initial requests.

"[Volkert] won't have to worry about getting three inches of rain last night, so someone's got to figure out what to do with all this flooding," he said. "They'll be embedded in the project ... I think an architect is going to be more focused on creating the design, delivering the design, delivering the contract documents for you."

Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox elaborated on the need to contract with the services of an outside firm, especially with Elevate Tuscaloosa set to bring numerous projects to fruition over the next five to seven years.

"Whatever the Council feels is the best direction, we will make that happen," Maddox said. "But think about it this way. Look at the University of Alabama. They have a full department that does nothing but construction of their facilities and that's something they do day in, day out. The city builds a lot of infrastructure. We don't build a lot of buildings. So, every day when the University of Alabama is working on their facilities, they hire project managers, contractors, and they even have a staff that's layered in to make certain that every dime is spent appropriately."

The mayor then mentioned some of the city's activity centers that would be easier to tear down after two or three decades than it would be to renovate them.

"The construction manager is going to make certain that what we're getting represents the owner's view now and in 30 years from now," he said. "Now, the city could go a different route. The city could go and hire a construction management team for the slew of projects that we've got that's coming. That is going to cost you a lot more over 5 to 7 years."

Conversely, Maddox argued that hiring an outside firm to handle owner representation services for the Benjamin Barnes will cost the city more over the next three years. But when looking at the longterm impacts, those hired in construction management as city employees would drop their probationary employment status after one year, effectively earning a "job for life," as the mayor put it.

"We don't do vertical construction," the mayor continued, before mentioning the different nuances presented when constructing a large-scale facility like the new proposed Benjamin Barnes Branch YMCA. "All those different things that none of us have the expertise to know is going to be their job to review."

After additional discussion where council members relayed a range of constituent concerns and questions, the decision was made to table the matter until next week.

The next meeting of the Tuscaloosa City Council's Finance Committee is scheduled for Tuesday, Aug. 30 at 2:30 p.m.

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