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Philly Police HQ gets added construction costs as builders miss completion target

Officials expect the redevelopment of the former Inquirer building at 400 N. Broad St. to be finished six months later than targeted. It may also cost as much as $1.26 million more than announced.

An exterior view of the former Inquirer building on North Broad Street, which is now set to open in June 2021 as the new headquarters for the Philadelphia Police Department.
An exterior view of the former Inquirer building on North Broad Street, which is now set to open in June 2021 as the new headquarters for the Philadelphia Police Department.Read moreDAVID MAIALETTI / Staff Photographer

Developers of the new Philadelphia Police Department headquarters at the former Inquirer building on North Broad Street have blasted past their planned completion date for the project, which is now set to cost the city over $1 million more than previously announced.

Officials expect the redevelopment of the former newspaper tower at 400 N. Broad St. to be finished in June 2021, six months later than the targeted completion date of Dec. 31, 2020, in its developers’ original contract with the city, city spokesman Paul Chrystie said in an email.

A city agency has also authorized as much as $1.26 million more for the building’s redevelopment than the $280.3 million that Mayor Jim Kenney’s office had said the project would cost in June 2017, shortly after the plan was announced. The additional spending is for a construction-auditing firm, Philadelphia-based Talson Solutions LLC, to monitor the project’s development on behalf of the city.

There had been no other additional costs that weren’t in the original budget, Chrystie said.

It is not uncommon for the end users of big, complex projects to hire such “owners representatives” to monitor invoices and expense reports, track adherence to construction schedules, and other auditing tasks.

The Kenney administration was “pleased that this enormous project remains on target for a 2021 opening,” given the logistical and economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, Chrystie said.

The police department did not directly respond to questions about whether the delay posed any scheduling or logistical difficulties, but said in a statement that it was working with city agencies “to ensure a smooth transition to the new building.”

» READ MORE: Philly Police Department to move into former Inquirer, Daily News building on N. Broad (from May 2017)

“As with any project of this magnitude, timelines are fluid,” the department said.

However, Kris Henderson, executive director of Amistad Law Center, a public-interest law firm, said Philadelphians should have been made aware of the extra spending toward what many consider an already-expensive project.

The announced budget increase could reinforce impressions that the city is disproportionately generous to its police department, to the detriment of other priorities, Henderson said.

“In the city, we’ve seen a lot of problems with transparency, with the police, in particular,” Henderson said, citing such instances as officials’ initial defense — later walked back — of the use of tear gas, pepper spray, and rubber bullets on protesters gathered on I-676 in June.

During a December hearing on gun violence, Councilmember Kenyatta Johnson also questioned why the project does not include a new police forensics lab, which some law-enforcement officials have cast as essential to clearing more fatal firearms investigations.

Of the nearly 8,500 shootings in which people were wounded or killed since 2015, just 21% have resulted in charges, and fewer than 9% have reached a conviction, The Inquirer reported in December.

“If we’re building a brand new police building that we signed off for, I need a better explanation as to why the crime lab wouldn’t be a part of that new building,” he said.

The completion delay and additional spending are the latest twists to what has become a long-running and costly effort to move the Philadelphia Police Department to a new home from its outdated headquarters at Seventh and Race Streets, known as the Roundhouse.

» READ MORE: The old Inquirer Building is soon to become Police Headquarters. My tour was bittersweet. | Mike Newall (from April 2019)

Under then-Mayor Michael Nutter, City Council approved plans in 2014 to rehabilitate the former Provident Mutual Life Insurance Co. building at 46th and Market Streets in West Philadelphia for the department.

In 2017, after more than $52 million had been spent to buy and renovate the life insurance building, the Kenney administration jettisoned plans to move police there, opting instead for a deal to place the department in the 18-story tower vacated five years earlier by The Inquirer and Daily News newspapers.

The Provident Mutual building was sold by the city in early 2019 for $42 million less than it had spent at the site. It is now being developed into a public-health campus.

Meanwhile, officials agreed to pay Inquirer building owner Bart Blatstein $249 million for the purchase and redevelopment of the tower and an adjacent parking structure. Costs associated with the project — beyond those being paid to Blatstein or his affiliates, including furniture and equipment purchases — would bring the project’s total cost to maximum of $280.3 million, city officials said at the time.

Talson’s initial $1.1 million contract — not accounted for in the announced budget — was approved in September 2017 by the board of the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority, according to meeting minutes. The PRA board approved a one-year, $150,000 extension to that contract in November 2020, due to the delayed completion date, the minutes show.

Talson president Robert S. Bright declined to comment on the company’s work at the police headquarters project, referring questions to the city. Blatstein did not respond to a message.

Talson has done construction-monitoring work at Lincoln Financial Field, Citizens Bank Park, the Comcast Center, and the Freedom Tower in Lower Manhattan, and has worked on the $5.2 billion Panama Canal expansion project.

The company was also awarded a contract for as much as $424,000 in 2017 to monitor minority participation in the rebuilding of parks, recreation centers and libraries under the city’s $500 million Rebuild initiative.

Chrystie said the project-auditing contract with Talson was not disclosed as part of the original budget because it had not yet been approved by the PRA board.

He said the completion delay was due to flooding and area-wide electric-service outages at the start of construction; the redesign of some features, including an expansion of the medical examiner’s office; and a construction shutdown at the start of the COVID-19 health crisis, as well as pandemic-related supply issues.

“The administration is not dismayed by these delays, which frankly are at a level to be expected for a project of this size and complexity, particularly a project that involves a substantial [information technology] infrastructure,” Chrystie said.