Sticking to his guns, Precinct 1 Commissioner Richard Morrison said Monday Fort Bend County subcontractors still aren’t getting their fair share of work on the upcoming county courts complex.
Also, despite the fact the estimated cost for the building has dropped to $58.5 million for an original estimate of $74 million, Morrison was critical of the building’s cost.
Morrison criticized Houston contractor JE Dunn Construction on Thursday, after looking at documents he said indicated local subcontractors would see less than $6,000 in work from the big contract. Later that day, Morrison said he’d been shown numbers indicating the local share of the contract totaled about $1.8 million.
Eary Monday, FortBendNow reported on a letter from a JE Dunn official saying the company likely would award $3.8 million in direct local subcontract work on the project.
“Local firms are still getting less than 8% of the work,” Moprrison said. “I still think less than 8% of $58 million is not enough.”
(The $3.8 million figure represents about 6.5% of $58.5 million.)
The final contract for the judicial center likely will be a topic of discussion at Tuesday’s Commissioners Court session. In order for the project to move forward, court members must authorize the signing of the final “Guaranteed Maximum Price Change Order,” presented by JE Dunn for a total of $58,485,991.
Even though considerably less than the original estimate, Morrison said the justice center “will cost about $270 per square foot, which is about $100 per square foot more than the cost of the Precinct 1 and Tax Office buildings recently completed, but begun before construction costs began to fall significantly.”
That $100 per-square-foot additional cost equals more than $20 million for the 215,000-square-foot building, he said, “and the cost of the parking garage is not included.”
