Assembly gives tentative support to advance Capital Civic Center design; manager directed to draft MOA and consider a partnership grant

Assembly members on Jan. 27 indicated support for advancing a revised Capital Civic Center design to reduce cost uncertainty and enable fundraising and contractor engagement, and they asked the city manager to craft a memorandum of agreement to protect municipal interests if CBJ funds are used to reach schematic design.

Background and proposal: City staff and the Civic Center partnership summarized a reworked design that maintains Centennial Hall, adds a new performing‑arts/theater element and a subdividable community hall, and seeks to avoid net parking loss by reconfiguring site circulation. The partnership’s team said it had tightened the program compared with earlier large‑scale proposals and argued that a 65% design level is necessary to reduce the project’s current wide contingency and to obtain reliable construction pricing via a CM/GC or constructability review.

Costs and design scope: Presentations to the Committee described the current conceptual estimate as carrying a large contingency (the partnership referenced a roughly $5 million contingency in its conceptual estimate) and said aggregate cost ranges reflect many unknowns at the…