County Footing the Bill for Millions in Public Defender Rehab Project

By City News Service:

Refurbishing a downtown Riverside building that will serve as the future headquarters for the Riverside County Public Defender’s Office is proving “immensely complex” and more expensive than originally planned, a county official told the Board of Supervisors this week.

Economic Development Agency Director Rob Field was summoned on Tuesday to give an update on the ongoing rehab of the eight-story, 77,000-square-foot building that over the last two years has become an eyesore in the Riverside civic center plaza.

“The project has been in the works for quite some time. It’s an immensely complex undertaking,” Field told the board. “Things have turned up that we never could have foreseen.”

Repairs and additions to the building were supposed to have been done last year, but Field said seismic retrofit work floundered when inspectors discovered the foundation was in abysmal condition.

“We found remnants of an old movie theater underneath the building,” the EDA chief said. “We basically had to construct a new foundation.”

Temecula resident Paul Jacobs pointed to the project as an example of deficient stewardship for which county residents are having to pay.

“Was there a failure by the county?” he asked during the board discussion. “This county seems to be in a world of hurt.”

Supervisor John Benoit said he found the construction delays concerning and noted that when the board decided to preserve the aging structure rather than tear it down and rebuild on the site, EDA estimated the rebuild would cost 50 percent more.

“Are we still saving money?” Benoit asked.

“It’s now more like 25 percent savings,” Field said.

Last October, the board hired Buena Park-based Angeles Contractor Inc. to complete seismic retrofitting on the structure at a cost of $2.5 million.

Angeles picked up where Glendale-based AWI Builders left off. AWI was hired in February 2013 at a cost of more than $14 million to replace most of the interior of the building, as well as take care of the retrofitting, which was deemed necessary after inspections uncovered cracks in the floors from past earthquakes.

The office complex, located at 4075 Main St., sits directly across the street from the Riverside Historic Courthouse and long served as the headquarters of the District Attorney’s Office. The D.A.’s staff relocated in 2010 to a newly built tower at Ninth and Orange streets, just around the corner.

AWI was slated to finish all work on the future public defender HQ by last July, but according to the EDA, the entire project was only 30 percent complete by that time. The county terminated AWI’s contract on July 26.

The building resembles an abandoned husk, missing walls and windows on every floor.

Board members have urged progress in rehabbing the structure, which Department of Probation personnel will also be utilizing, because the public defender’s current offices at 4200 Orange St. are overcrowded, with hallways used as temporary storage.

All of the work is covered under a multimillion-dollar bond sale approved by the board in May 2013.

(Image via Shutterstock)