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JAMESTOWN – A final price tag for Jamestown’s new fleet maintenance garage includes a nearly one million dollar increase for materials due to inflation.
Lawmakers in the City of Jamestown received a final quote of around $5 million dollars earlier this week for the project to renovate the former Hartley Buick GMC dealership on Washington Street.
“We were hoping to be within budget,“ explained Mayor Eddie Sundquist. “When we decided to choose a different location instead of building a completely new garage. We were going to be right within budget, but as many of you all probably know, if you try to get a contractor to do a deck or build anything in your house, the rates have doubled and tripled in some cases due to inflation and work.”
While some council members looked at the new location with disdain, Council President Tony Dolce says the enormous price tag is a cost of doing business in this day and age.
“We passed a series of resolutions for several hundreds of thousands of dollars of improvements to that building,“ stated President Dolce. “Unfortunately because of the way that the economy is right now those costs have gone dramatically up, but that’s the price of doing business today. To try to retrofit that building, to make it do what we need it to do.”
Even though the price has increased, Mayor Sundquist ensures that this is the most cost effective option, with the construction of a brand new building costing more than double.
“If we were to rebuild or create a completely new garage, we were looking somewhere at 10 plus million dollars at this point given inflation,“ explained Mayor Sundquist, “The fact that we’re still hovering around $4 to 5 million for the rebuild, in addition some of that property was also sold to a for profit business, that’ll have a business on it. I think it was a good result overall.”
One aspect for the high price tag, is the build’s projected eco-footprint, with everything being electric powered with no use of natural gas.
Originally the plan was to build a $4 million dollar building on Crescent Street, even with a $1 million dollar grant from the state going towards the project, officials are still looking at other options for funding with any leftover costs will still be covered under normal bond processes.
Construction of the new garage has already begun, with building materials expected to arrive sometime in August.
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