Wednesday, December 7, 2022
By Selen Ozturk
At its meeting on Monday, December 5, the Piedmont City Council unanimously voted to award a construction contract for a new Piedmont Community Pool to Wickman Development & Construction for $21,700,000. The council also approved an overall construction budget of $23,870,000.
The primary source of construction funding was a public bond, Measure UU, which was approved on the Piedmont ballot two years ago. The measure authorized the City to issue up to $19.5 million in bonds.
Eric Havian, General Counsel of the non-profit Piedmont Recreational Facilities Organization, confirmed on Monday that PRFO had raised $1 million dollars of its goal of $2.1 million.
Stuart Isaac, President of Isaac Sports Group, hired by the city council as financial manager of the entire project, stated that he is “looking for the pool to launch in spring, ahead of heavy summer-season demand.” At the Council meeting, Isaac presented a report on projected operational costs of the pool. The budget, he said, included $2.7 million dollars in contingency fees for the pool, facility building, electrification costs, and offsite improvements – particularly for replacing the concrete on surrounding sidewalks.
He projected that the pool would achieve a positive net revenue in its third year, recuperating construction costs at 103%, although its second year would come close at 98%. The “most game-changing part of the pool,” Isaac said, was electrification. The council approved an all-electric pool design last April, “deciding boldly to be an early adopter of electric-heated large public swimming pools even in the face of greatly inflated construction costs.” “It’s one thing to build the pool; it’s a whole other thing to operate it,” commented City Administrator Sara Lillevand.
Clarence Mamuyac, a Piedmont resident and CEO of ELS Architecture and Urban Design, the architects for the new pool, has been overseeing the architectural process with the goal of approaching a net-zero carbon emissions goal as closely as possible. He stated that he expects the pool to last at least 50 years “given good maintenance practices.” Mamuyac said that the Piedmont project “is currently one of two pool electrification projects of its kind in the state.” The second project, on which
Mamuyac is also working, is in Mountain View. A third electric-heated project is currently being develPool Contract Continued from page 1 oped by the city of South San Francisco, and a fourth for the city of Oxnard.
At the Council meeting, Jon Hughes of Griffin Structures, which the City hired in June one year ago as Project Manager for the pool construction project. He affirmed that a Pool Bond Oversight Committee would meet to check pool bond expenditures quarterly starting in January.
Furthermore, said Hughes, Griffin Structures would meet with Wickman Construction “every single week under ELS – breaking down construction costs, making sure they conform to the pool budget, providing weekly updates to City staff, and publishing monthly and quarterly updates for the community.”
Throughout the meeting, he emphasized the “exhaustive risk-management process” which Griffin and Wickman would take
