New Merriam Community Center Design

Audit of the Pre-Vote Information Reveals Misleading Distortions

by David Neal, Merriam City Council

August 14, 2018
Last Updated September 15, 2018

As a member of the City Council, I believe it is one of the duties of all elected officials to provide oversight and thoughtful judgment concerning activities that the City is undertaking. When something doesn't seem right, as an elected official you should ask questions and try to understand to the best of your ability any discrepancies between the information that has raised your concerns and any other factual information you can develop. The purpose of this series of posts is to discuss issues that have been raised about the new Merriam Community Center and Aquatics Center project.

Past Distortions - selling the need for NEW

Based on my engineering and construction background, I have carefully reviewed the master plan and supporting documents for the new Merriam Community Center. As a result, I have discovered and compiled detailed evidence in this report that appears to show that during the City's marketing of the new community center project:

• Costs to repair, renovate, upgrade and expand Merriam's existing facilities were grossly overstated when marketing the new community center to voters and possibly to members of the City Council.
• Conversely, the costs to construct a new community center with indoor and outdoor aquatics appear to have been significantly understated when marketing the plan.
• Problems with continuing to use the existing community center building and the existing Merriam Aquatic Center were exaggerated and over-dramatized.

In summary, key numbers were inaccurately portrayed to the public through the city’s marketing material for the new Merriam Community Center. The real cost numbers to deliver the promises made to Merriam residents in the 2017 Facilities Master Plan are proving to be higher, so outdoor aquatics has been significantly downgraded in the design for the new community center to cover the shortfall.

Those incorrect numbers consistently supported building a suitable new community center at a project cost that now appears highly questionable. Therefore, the current project design should be reviewed/audited thoroughly before demolition of existing facilities or construction of the new community center proceeds.

Overstating the cost to improve existing facilities

My review of the engineering reports plus phone conversations with the experts who helped prepare them and confirm that the actual cost to repair, renovate, upgrade and expand existing facilities is $6.2 million-$11 million:

• $600,000-$900,000 to renovate the existing Merriam Aquatics Center, and
• $5.6 million to renovate, or as much as $9.8 million to renovate and expand the Irene B. French Community Center.

But the city's marketing material, released to the public both in print and online , repeatedly list a $20 million cost — a figure that is not supported by any of the engineering/consulting reports for which the city paid hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The $20 million figure amounts to an exaggeration of 182% for the renovate-and-expand option and of 323% for the renovate-only path. Even allowing for additional soft costs and financing charges, the $20 million cost estimate for renovation of existing facilities has been grossly overstated.

Understating the cost for a new community center

On the other hand, the cost for constructing a new community center with indoor and outdoor aquatics appear to have been significantly understated in marketing the new community center to voters. The January 2017 master plan states a specific cost of $30 million to construct a new community center. But in the April Facilities Update marketing brochure, distributed to the public both in print and online, the cost for "a dual use community center/aquatics center facility consisting of indoor and outdoor pools on the Vavra Park site ... is estimated to cost $25-30 million.

The Details - Pattern of overstating problems & renovation costs while understating costs of 'new' and over-promising features

Various marketing materials including paper brochures as well as a special Merriam blog site that was used to 'inform' the public about the "Merriam Parks and Recreation Facilities update planning," all indicated that the renovation and upgrading of the current facilities would be $20 million (or more).

The City of Merriam launched a new blog-style marketing web site on October 25, 2016 entitled "The Future of Merriam's Recreation Facilities and branded as the Merriam Parks and Recreation Department. This blog was used frequently to post content supporting the city's case for building a new community center with indoor and outdoor aquatics components.

The site was updated frequently until the voters passed the financing piece of the new community center project in September 2017 in a special election.

Coincidently, the site was not updated at all after the funding vote was passed on September 15, 2017 through July 2018, during the critical project stages when:

• Merriam hired an Owner's Representative.
• Merriam decided to explore co-locating the Antioch Library on the new Community Center campus.
• Merriam formed a Design-Build (Contractor) Selection Committee comprised of the three senior Merriam city staff members who made up the staff 'project team'; the new Owner's Representative who reports to staff; one City Council member who also serves as Chair of the Johnson County Library Board; and one resident member of the Parks Board. None of these individuals appear to have any professional technical expertise in construction, architecture, engineering, or related disciplines that would seemingly be useful in evaluating the competencies and qualifications of the architects and builders competing for Merriam's no-bid project contract.
• Merriam hired the Design-Build Contractor team based on the 'selection' of the Design-Build Selection Committee.
• Merriam's Mayor appointed a Community Center Design Committee with not a single aquatics patron serving until four months later after the design of the aquatics was long completed by the staff internal team and was facing early criticism by members of the public.
• Merriam decided to also build an additional $5 million parking structure to accommodate the Johnson County Library co-location add-on project.
• Merriam staff 'design team' worked with the design-build contractor from February 2018 through June 2018 (four to five months) to design the community building and aquatics program without even consulting the Community Center Design Committee until after all the major decisions were already made. There were no alternative concept designs presented to the citizen design committee. The Committee seems to have been primarily tasked with the equivalent of "selecting the drape colors" in the design of a home.

The city observed communications silence on the special Community Center web site through all these critical steps, indicating that the real purpose of the "facilities update" web site was really only to secure the $30 million from voters in the Sept 2017 Special Election. Once that goal was reached, the need to inform seems to have disappeared.

Unfortunately during the pre-vote marketing phase when the site was used extensively, it was full of bad information.

The Merriam Parks and Recreation Update document presented the public with a bleak, exaggerated picture of the state of disrepair and resulting high cost of updating Merriam's existing facilities. As a result, it encouraged support for building a new facility rather than refurbishing and updating existing ones.

Conflicting figures are cited for renovation of the Irene B. French within the single page of the Facilities Update pictured above. In the top section, costs of $10-12 million are cited for renovation/expansion of the existing facility. Later on the same page, a figure of $10-15 million is used.

A review of the Susan Richards Johnson & Associates (SRJ) facilities evaluation of the Irene B. French Community Center actually reflects cost options from $5.6-$9.8 million for various renovation and renovation/expansion options. The $15 million option in the SRJ report is the cost to tear down and rebuild the Community Center (without aquatics). Clearly, it is unreasonable to use the $15 million figure in the SRJ comparison analysis to contrast renovation versus the master plan's replace option — because both estimates involve replacing the community center building with a new one!

A more fair presentation of the cost options for renovating the existing community center would have been to use $6-10 million rather than either $10-12 million (I don’t see where the $12 million number might have come from) or $10-15 million.

The section about the Merriam Aquatic Center (MAC) at the bottom of page 2 of the Facilities Update pictured above says:

The section went on to say, "This would be in addition to the $10-15 million to renovate the Irene B. French Community Center." As stated earlier, that claim about the Community Center is also overstated by $5 million to $10 million.

However, back to the Merriam Aquatic Center, the actual 2014 Larkin Engineering Report does not say anything at all about the need for basin replacement, nor does it mention the $3.5 million cost for 'basin replacement' presented in the city’s marketing campaign. In fact, the report calls the basin's condition "satisfactory," which is engineering lingo meaning that it is older but still functioning well. The executive summary states, "The main pool basin appears to be in satisfactory condition. There are locations of concrete delamination to be monitored."

The report does detail repairs and updates costing less than $1 million that would address the observed and likely problems that the Merriam Aquatics Center will likely need to deal with over the study's evaluation future horizon. It goes into detail about the condition of each component of the facility and any remediation that is recommended for long term continued use of this long-time Merriam community asset.

Specifically as an example of properly reading an engineering report that should be understood to be a positive judgement, in the discussion of the main pool basin, old cracks were noted in the detail section of the report but were observed to still be sealed from the previous epoxy basin coating, indicating no recent movement or basin integrity concerns. The report recommends continued monitoring of the cracks and repair of the minor delamination observed, along with a continued 3-to-5 year schedule of basin coating re-applications.

Nowhere does the Larkin report suggest that $4.4 million would be needed in order to continue use of the Merriam Aquatics Center.

The report concludes: "With adequate attention and responsible resolutions, the Merriam Aquatic Center can continue to serve citizens for years to come."

However, the city implies in its marketing materials that Larkin Aquatics’ 2014 report provided an estimate of $4.4 million ($900K + $3.5 million) required to continue operating the existing Merriam Aquatic Center. Once again based on my engineering and construction background, I detect no such concerns in the Larkin report, especially since the report never mentions basin replacement.

But to be sure that the basin replacement recommendation was not later added during follow up communications, I reached out to the report's author. During two phone calls (an initial recollected answer when question first posed, and confirmation call after reviewing project notes), engineer and report author Kyle McCawley indicated that he did not recommend basin replacement to the city.

He acknowledged the possibility that someone from the city later asked about the cost to replace the basin if and when it actually was needed. He indicated that he may have provided a number for that hypothetical situation (although he has no record of doing so), but he did not recommend that such action was needed in any time horizon he was formally asked about.

Page 3 of the marketing publication released by the city during the 2016-2017 campaign to convince the public that Merriam needed a new community center discusses the new center’s design envisioned by the Merriam Parks and Recreation 2017 Master Facilities Plan. It says in part:

The marketing materials describe a $25-30 million cost. But the cost for the described "clear preference" option in the master plan is $30 million – not $25 million.

Doing the math using the numbers in the official Merriam Parks and Recreation Facilities Update document, $15 million for the community center plus $4.5 million more for the pool equals about $20 million. Compared to a cost of only $25-30 million for a completely new community center with both indoor and outdoor aquatics, what should the city do? Most people would say since upgrades would already cost 2/3 to 4/5 of the replacement cost for a "newer, better' community center, "Heck yes, let's build a new and better one!"

That opinion is understandable. However, the marketing materials on which that opinion was based contained incorrect data. I will admit that, as a private citizen, I didn't read the report details carefully before I voted to fund the new community center project last September. Now, as an elected official, I have done so. I also have compared the report details with the city's marketing effort.

As I have stated previously, the cost for constructing a new community center with indoor and outdoor aquatics was significantly understated in the city's marketing to voters while the cost to renovate and expand existing facilities was greatly overstated. The resulting smaller incremental cost to build new based on the inaccurately stated costs likely led to a number of 'yes' votes that would have been 'no' votes if the actual — and much greater — incremental costs had been provided.

The actual cost for renovating (and expanding) existing facilities, according to the engineering studies, was $11 million (not $20 million as stated in the marketing materials). The cost to build the new community center was known to be $32 million (including a necessary adjustment for inflation at the time of the September 2017 Special Election). The resulting actual incremental cost of $20.8 million to build new was never presented to voters. Someone would have had to read the engineering reports to uncover the discrepancy.

The actual cost for renovating (without expanding) existing facilities, according to the engineering studies, was even smaller at $6.2 million (not the $20 million stated in the marketing materials). The resulting actual incremental cost to build new is $25.8 million compared with the cost of renovating existing facilities. This number also was never presented to voters.

Merriam Aquatic Center: Why must it be replaced?

Another major flaw in the presentation of options to the public was the completely unnecessary demolition and replacement of the current Merriam Aquatic Center (MAC). With actual renovation costs of less than $1 million and with a continuing operating subsidy of only about $100,000 per year to provide our community with one of the best summer outdoor aquatics experiences in Johnson County, the public and City Council were instead led to believe that renovation of the MAC would cost $4.4 million and the terrible condition of the facility was significantly contributing to the $800,000 in combined subsidies for the Irene B. French Community Center (IBFCC) and the MAC. In fact, the operating subsidy was mostly spent operating the IBFCC.

Given the reality of the relatively good physical and operating condition of the MAC, I have tried to understand why it needed to be removed and also why it should be replaced with something much smaller — but I can’t arrive at any logical conclusions.

Does the smaller replacement design simply fulfill a wish from someone (or some ones) to leave room on the Vavra Park site for co-location of a new Johnson County Public Library? Such a move would free up the current Antioch Library property at the corner of Antioch and Shawnee Mission Parkway for private commercial development. A regional developer has already acquired most of the property on the south side of Shawnee Mission Parkway across from the library as well as property adjacent to the library on the north side of this major arterial roadway.

Closing thoughts about ‘selling’ the new community center

What is most troubling to me as construction professional with an engineering background, as a fact-based decision-maker, and as a City Council member is that virtually all the key numbers in the consultant's reports to the city were inaccurately portrayed in the city's marketing to the public. And the incorrect numbers always pointed to building a new community center.

Costs for retaining and updating the existing facilities were inflated, sometimes grossly. Costs for building the new community center option were underreported when compared to the master plan that the marketing piece was summarizing. Without benefit of the facts in the consultant’s reports, that misstatement of numbers swayed public opinion and the public vote

Well, I did look closely at the actual data. I checked and rechecked the facts, and I now have presented the numbers and documentation so everyone else can check, as well. I am happy to answer anyone's questions about this or anything else I have discovered during a month's odyssey of research.

I wish I had run for and been elected to the City Council sooner than this past November. I like to think that I would have caught the mistakes and/or misrepresentations about this project long before now.

As it is, we citizens of Merriam find ourselves at a crucial juncture. We are poised to break ground very soon on a notably flawed project. The first step in that project is to bulldoze the current Merriam Aquatic Center, an asset of the community that has been incorrectly portrayed as needing to be replaced.

I have come to believe that we need to pause and figure out what we are really doing before we undertake demolition or any other irreversible step. Further, I believe that the project needs to be reviewed thoroughly because the vote to build a new community center was based on numerous errors.

I realize that such a pause may cost the city more money. But it has potential to save money in the long run. To continue without answering the serious questions raised here will likely lead to greater long-term costs.