The Westmoreland County Commissioners on Thursday agreed to pay a $1 million increase, making the new price $8 million, for the recent demolition and reconstruction of the county courthouse plaza and the parking garage underneath it.
The increase resulted from several unanticipated work items and costs that exceeded the original planned scope of the project, county public works director Greg McCloskey said. The contractor was Carl Walker Construction.
The most expensive item, costing about $450,000, involved reconstruction of holding cells for the county sheriff’s office that extended from the original portion of the courthouse into the adjacent work area for the garage and plaza, McCloskey said.
“We didn’t expect that when we started,” he said. “The scope was written sight unseen before we tore things down because it was an emergency situation.”
The county commissioners closed the two-level garage in March 2022 after engineers reported the structure was in danger of a potential collapse.
Architects designed a rebuild that replaced the garage and reconfigured the courthouse plaza atop the parking structure as part of a project that originally was contracted at about $7 million.
That original amount and the $1 million addition will all be paid for from the county’s share of federal covid relief funds, McCloskey said.
An additional $329,000 was spent to pay architects and to cover the costs for about 140 courthouse employees to park elsewhere during the garage reconstruction, McCloskey said.
The reconstructed garage opened in early July, and pedestrians were welcomed back to the courthouse plaza in mid-August, completing a 16-month project.
Officials initially expected the project to be completed in about six months.
Delays were attributed to water infiltration at the site, discovery of bedrock that prompted additional design work and a need for larger columns to support the parking garage.
Inspectors concluded decades of water damage had eroded support beams and concrete on the upper and lower parking levels.
“Until we tore (the garage) out, we didn’t know what he had,” McCloskey has said. “There were material shortages, and architects had to fine tune the drawings.”
Another unforeseen work item, he said, involved installation of new drainage in the garage floor, at an extra cost of about $150,000.
“Nobody could know that until we demolished that building and tore the old floor out,” McCloskey said.
The garage initially was constructed during a 1980s-era courthouse expansion. McCloskey noted there were no county staffers remaining from that period to which project planners could turn.
Viewing old blueprints, planners weren’t certain if the courthouse annex office space was connected to the portion of the garage being demolished. They eventually found out it wasn’t connected.
But, McCloskey said, the contractor initially was required to post an extra bond of $93,000 to insure the annex for $53 million.
Completion of the project also was delayed as a result of waterproofing of the exterior structure and a minor design change to adjust the elevation levels of the courtyard.
McCloskey has noted the rebuilt plaza was designed with a slight grade to allow water to drain away from the courthouse. The new grading accounts for a raised concrete deck that sits above the garage and provides for the potential construction of additional floors above the garage.
The plaza features an area for events at the corner of Otterman and Main streets and aluminum lettering that spells out “Westmoreland.” New lighting has allowed the county to coordinate colored illumination of the lettering with colors used to light the courthouse dome after dark.
Jeff Himler is a TribLive reporter covering Greater Latrobe, Ligonier Valley, Mt. Pleasant Area and Derry Area school districts and their communities. He also reports on transportation issues. A journalist for more than three decades, he enjoys delving into local history. He can be reached at jhimler@triblive.com.