Construction of a restroom at Lacy Park has resumed. The project, originally slated to be completed in 2019, repeatedly ran past deadlines when a previous contractor was in charge.
The worksite for Lacy Park’s beleaguered new restroom is once again occupied.
If all works out, crews are expected to complete the structure on or before Sept. 29, at which time the city will remove the long-standing portable restrooms from the park along with the unsightly fencing and equipment surrounding the permanent structure. The new firm, Pasadena-based Access Pacific, was hired to replace the original contractor after the project ran nearly a year past its original completion date.
“Not the ideal scenario, but the work is going to get done,” said Michael Throne, the city’s director of parks and public works. “I look forward to hopefully getting this project done ahead of the new schedule.”
The $337,400 contract for the restroom was initially awarded in November 2018 and was scheduled to be completed in April 2019. However, the city moved to terminate the contract in January this year when the project still had not been completed. Throne had at the time compiled a thorough documentation of that contractor’s shortcomings for the project, which included what he described as poor workmanship and failure to maintain a safe worksite, among other detractions.
When the city terminated the contractor — Long Beach-based Meyers Construction — the firm’s surety group, Argonaut Insurance, negotiated with the city to bring in the replacement firm. It also cut a check for nearly $218,000 to San Marino, to make up for liquidated damages, address inflation costs and reimburse the city for excess portable restroom rental.
“It was very important that we gave the original contractor the opportunity to succeed, so that when push came to shove and it came to litigation, we would have a much stronger chance of prevailing,” Throne said. “At the end of the day, negotiating was the best outcome for everybody.
“The city is incurring no additional cost to complete the project,” he added.
The city will continue to manage the project. Throne said workers re-entered the site last week, where they initially had to perform clean-up before resuming construction.
“That’s what they’ve been engaged on,” he added. “There was a lot of construction debris and it kind of got overgrown. It was not a safe place for anyone to work. The cleaner their job site while they’re working, generally the better the contactor is. If you have good habits while preparing a meal, the better the meal is going to be, to use a kitchen analogy.”
