Unforeseen costs add $1.1M to Mercer County Criminal Courthouse construction bill

TRENTON Unexpected expenses will add $1.1 million to the overall $52 million cost of the new Mercer County criminal courthouse, officials said.

Amended contracts and unforeseen expenses that came up during the two-year construction process at Market and Warren streets have inflated the cost of the building, Phillip Miller, executive director of the Mercer County Improvement Authority, said. Completion of the four story, 141,000-square-foot building is expected by the fall. The additional costs were noted at yesterdays meeting of the MCIAs board of commissioners.

Some of the expenses resulted from deliberate actions taken by the MCIA, and others were unknown expenses, Miller said.

We ran into issues that were not anticipated, Miller said.

The courthouse construction is part of an $80 million justice center renovation plan that includes the design and construction of the new building as well as the demolition of a detention center and parking garage formerly on the site. Billed as the largest county government construction project in dollar terms, it is funded partly through the use of Build America Bonds under the Federal Stimulus Package.

Miller said that the unexpected costs only make up about 2 percent of the courthouse construction cost.

We are coming in on time and under budget and that is key, said Miller. This has gone extremely well.

John Thurber, chair of the MCIA board, commended his colleagues for their hard work to ensure that building and the total project stayed within budget.

The interior of the new courthouse is completely dry walled and painted, Miller said. The audio-visual components, including drop-down video in projector screens in each of the 10 courtrooms, are being installed, Miller said.

It is the beginning of the end, Miller said.

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Unforeseen costs add $1.1M to Mercer County Criminal Courthouse construction bill