Eagle store faces another setback

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By Sheena Dooley and Barb Ickes | Saturday, March 24, 2007 10:15 AM CDT | () comments

(Larry Fisher/QUAD-CITY TIMES) Receptionist Erica Dalburg works in the cramped quarters that the Bettendorf School District Administration shares with the Mississippi Bend Area Education Agency.

One of three partners in a lease deal with the City of Bettendorf is backing out, and the others could do the same after bids for renovating the old Eagle grocery store came in much higher than expected.

Bettendorf School District officials said they will find another location for the district’s administrative offices because they cannot wait any longer for the city to come through on renovations to the former grocery store at 2867 Learning Campus Drive.

Scott Community College and the Iowa State Extension Service have started to look at other options but have not ruled out the current site.

The three schools signed on with the city in November 2005 to lease space in the building. Under the plans, it would house the Bettendorf district’s administrative offices, several Scott Community College degree programs and all programs offered through the extension office. The city originally told them they could move into the building in July 2006 when renovations were expected to be finished.

City officials pitched a low lease rate for the groups that was based on initial renovation cost estimates. At that time, they were told the plan would cost $2.9 million. However, later estimates came in $1 million higher, which led to delays.

The city upped the ante, adding more money to the Eagle renovation fund. Still, it wasn’t enough. The latest and lowest bid was $633,000 higher than expected.

Despite the delays, the schools stuck with the city — until this week. After a Tuesday vote by the city council to reject the latest bids, Bettendorf schools backed out.

“It has been much longer than anything we imagined,” said Marty Lucas, Bettendorf district superintendent. “It’s hard to blame anyone for this. It just didn’t work out.”

What went wrong?

The city bought the old grocery store on 18th Street in 2001, paying $1.25 million, even though it was valued at $2.5 million, City Administrator Decker Ploehn said. He said that $1.2 million in value was “gifted to the city” by the seller, who then claimed the contribution for tax purposes.

The Learning Campus idea is the city’s third plan for the property. It also was considered as a site for a new city hall and was studied as a potential performing arts center.

As the city closed in on a deal with the three educational entities, it struggled with fluctuating construction costs, varying estimates and design changes.

When asked what went wrong with the most recent plans for the former grocery store, Ploehn attributed the higher-than-expected bids to rising construction and material costs.

“Steel prices and stuff went up,” he said. “I don’t know that anything went wrong.”

He did, however, acknowledge that it’s possible the square-footage costs that were used to estimate the Eagle renovations were off target.

“That number probably wasn’t accurate enough for our project,” he said of the estimates, which were based on other grocery store renovations.

The other grocery store renovations that were used for comparison may not have been similar enough to the one in Bettendorf, he said. The Bettendorf property had its own set of specific needs, including a skylight the length of the building.

Schools back out

Bettendorf school board members voted in November 2005 to move the new Neil Armstrong Elementary School to the site of its former administration building, which they planned to relocate. Board members looked at building a new administration office, buying a building to renovate and lease options. They signed on with the city because it offered the best deal: a central location that would also house two college partners and cost the district $40,500 a year.

At the time, the city told the school district it would put the project out to bid immediately and start construction by January 2006. Renovations would be completed by July 2006, which fit into the district’s construction timeline for Neil Armstrong.

“We didn’t look at too many other things because this was so reasonable,” said Maxine McEnancy, the district’s business manager. “It was too good to be true.”

The district moved out of the old Ray Stensvad Administration Center last May and into the Mississippi Bend Area Education Agency, which agreed to temporarily house the district offices at no cost until the city finished work to the Eagles building. Lucas had expected to move into the new administrative offices a month later.

However, almost a year later, they are still crammed into a few rooms at the temporary location.

Barry Anderson, Bettendorf’s school board president, said the city did not tell the board what held up the bidding process but most likely the delay added to significantly higher than anticipated renovation costs.

“I don’t think there was any purposeful misleading of information (by the city),” Anderson said. “We were really following the city’s lead. It was pretty much out of our control.”

The future

Ploehn said the news of the Bettendorf School District backing out of the deal, combined with high bids, is a “disappointment,” especially since he’s been working on a plan for the property ever since the city bought it about six years ago.

“Maybe we can still salvage it,” he said of the expanded learning campus idea. “We got caught in a bit of a cyclone, if you will.”

That cyclone already has cost the city at least one grant from the Scott County Regional Authority, which Ploehn said he hopes to get back. The agency has been “very patient” with the change in plans, he said. However, Scott Community College stands to lose a $362,000 grant that is supposed to pay for culinary arts equipment.

Thomas Coley, president of the college, said the state extended the grant until the end of this year. The college will have to apply for another extension if the money isn’t used by then, he said.

“I don’t see this in a negative way against anyone,” Coley said. “We all worked as a partner. These are factors beyond our control.”

The next step for the city is a return to the drawing board.

“We’ll try to reconfigure it and see what we can do,” he said. “We’ve got to figure out if we can punt here and if we need a third tenant.”

Sheena Dooley can be contacted at (563)383-2363 or sdooley@qctimes.com. Barb Ickes can be contacted at (563)383-2316 or bickes@qctimes.com.