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Saturday, February 17, 2007

Ind. Courts - More on: Greene County Courthouse work hits snag

Laura Lane of the Bloomington Herald Times reports on the standoff impacting the renovation of the Greene County Courthouse. Some quotes:

BLOOMFIELD — Greene County owes Weddle Brothers Construction Co. more than $700,000 on a courthouse renovation project that began more than four years ago and still isn’t finished.

The company wants to be paid now and has stopped working on the project until the issue is resolved. Work shut down at the end of the day Jan. 29, and has not yet resumed.

County officials claim Weddle Brothers has not carried out work in accordance with a contract and is bound to continue working. They say the construction company is in default of its contract and subject to termination if workers do not return to the site this week.

It’s the latest in a long, drawn-out project that began innocently enough Sept. 3, 2002, when then-commissioners president Tom Britton donned a white hard hat and dug some dirt with a golden shovel to break ground for the anticipated renovation.

“We’ve been 10 years getting to this point,” Britton said then, referring to a decade of debate about whether the courthouse should be renovated and how the project would be financed. “This is going to be something we’ll be real proud of.”

Since then, the cost of what was expected to be a $10.5 million project has increased twice. In 2005, the county took out a $2.5 million additional line of credit to help cover extra costs that arose after the courthouse foundation shifted, causing an 18-month construction delay. * * * The cost now: $17 million.

Weddle Brothers says it waited seven months to be paid or to hear a response from the county as to why payment for the Phase II work was not forthcoming.

The county responded that by walking off the project after the building’s foundation shifted and walls cracked in January 2003, Weddle Brothers contributed to the delays and additional costs by being absent from the site for a year.

The ILB has posted a number of other entries on the Greene County Courthouse - access them here.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on February 17, 2007 04:58 PM
Posted to Indiana Courts