Board approves Crossland Construction award for Family Justice Center, allocates funds to Palomar parking garage

The MAPS for Citizens Advisory Board voted to ratify addendums 1–3 and award the construction contract for the Family Justice Center at 1135 North Hudson Avenue to Crossland Construction Company, with the base bid plus alternates 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 and 8 totaling $28,735,000, and to approve associated contracts and bonds.

MAPS program staff explained how funding will be structured for the project. Staff described an arrangement to preserve operator capital in an investment fund while using program funds and certain line-item reallocations to finance the construction. As staff put it: “The funding for this, remember that what we're looking at doing is taking some of the capital money that was originally intended by the operator to put into the investment fund, and basically use it as collateral, and use program funds to fund that now, so that they can keep that money in there, and it continues to draw interest.” Staff identified proposed reallocations including $300,000 from design (A&E), $200,000 from administration, $200,000 from testing and roughly $624,000 from project contingency while noting “that still leaves us with a couple million in contingency.”

In a separate but related action, the board authorized staff to use $3,543,187 of Family Justice Center funds to assist construction of a parking garage that will be used by Palomar clients and staff. Staff said Palomar will be allocated roughly 30 parking spaces in the garage, that the garage owner is pursuing TIF funding, and that those financing steps are expected to wrap up in about 30 days.

Board members voted to approve the contract award, the contract and bonds and the authorization to provide parking-garage funding from Family Justice Center funds. The transcript does not record a named mover/second or a vote tally for these items.