Even though the City Council rejected all bids to upgrade the body’s meeting chambers Wednesday, it gave the Leadership Morgan Hill 2013 class permission to continue planning a public art project that the nonprofit hopes will eventually be displayed inside the future new meeting room.
Near the end of a meeting that stretched late into the night, the four members of the Council present voted to direct City staff to continue to work with the LMH 2013 class to finalize the content and design of a collage depicting local art and life the class has proposed to donate to the City. The Council also offered to allow the class to display the piece at the Centennial Recreation Center until the Council chambers – the class’ preferred location for the artwork – can be upgraded and modernized.
The Council’s decision followed a recommendation by the City’s Library, Culture and Arts Commission last week to reject the project due to the lack of a maintenance budget for the art piece, scheduling conflicts with the proposed construction of the Council chambers, the lack of public input and lack of outreach to possible local contributing artists.
However, City staff said all these concerns could be “mitigated” as the LMH class continues to work on the art piece, and recommended the Council approve the project, which they did. Furthermore, some of the commission’s requests for the project “are not requirements of public art (as listed) in LCAC policies and procedures,” Morgan Hill Community Services Manager Maureen Tobin told the Council Wednesday.
Council members agreed with some of the LCAC’s concerns, but were confident that City staff can address them productively without rejecting the artwork as a whole.
“The most colorful thing in this room is the Coke machine, and that is not art,” Mayor Steve Tate quipped. “When somebody comes and offers us art for our Council chambers, I get excited.”
The LMH class of 2013 has proposed the artwork as its class project. The piece would consist of photographs depicting the “vibrancy and activity” of Morgan Hill, arranged in a collage in the shape of El Toro Mountain. LMH is a nonprofit organization that promotes education and leadership training, and each year’s class is required to complete a class project that benefits the public.
The class proposed displaying the piece on the interior wall of the new Council chambers, though after a separate action at Wednesday’s meeting the schedule for that project remains undetermined.
The Council decided in August 2012 to start looking into the costs and design options to renovate the existing Council chambers at 17555 Peak Ave., expand the meeting room to accommodate an audience of up to 280 and modernize the audiovisual equipment.
City staff hired Weston Miles Architects to produce design concepts, and then City staff requested construction bids for the project that was estimated to cost about $1 million. However, staff told the Council Wednesday that those bids came in significantly higher than the cost estimate.
Consequently, Council rejected the bids and decided to continue the discussion about how to proceed next at the next Council meeting in August.
One option, according to Morgan Hill Project Manager Julie Behzad, is to rebid the project with one general contractor, instead of bidding with a “multi-prime approach” as they did this month. That approach seeks a proposal for every aspect of the project – such as electrical, carpentry, plumbing, signage – and selects the lowest qualified bidder for each trade.
However, the total bids for that approach came out to nearly $2 million, according to City staff.
Furthermore, even if the Council wants to stick with the design option that holds an audience of 280 – the most extravagant option presented to them – the cost estimate for that option has increased to about $1.5 million, according to City staff. The higher estimate is a result of industry-wide increasing construction costs, due to growing building activity this summer.
Council members, just before 12 a.m. Thursday, noted that’s a big jump in the cost, and they requested a follow-up discussion at the next meeting so they will have enough time to talk about efforts to bring the cost back down to the original estimate by reducing the size of the project, rebidding the original 280-seat project scope with one single general contractor or delaying the project indefinitely.
