Fort Lauderdale’s new police station, only halfway built, already has an unexpected flaw: Hairline cracks forming in the concrete.
The project’s development team alerted city officials in March about cracks that were forming along the entire length of a support beam on the third floor. A roof slab on the building’s northwest corner was bending, causing cracks in the concrete.
Efforts to fix the problem have not worked, commissioners were told by the assistant city manager on Tuesday.
Mayor Dean Trantalis was frustrated by the news.
“This is not rocket science,” he said. “I’ve seen buildings all over the world built 1,000 and 2,000 years ago that are not cracking. How this ever happened, I don’t understand.”
According to Thornton Tomasetti, the project’s engineering firm of record, the weight of the precast panels was not factored into the structural analysis model.
When Vice Mayor Steve Glassman asked why, an official with the project’s design firm AECOM had a two-word answer: Human error.
Now Commissioner John Herbst says he wants the entire building torn down.
“I think we just need to tear this thing down and start all over again,” he said from the dais Tuesday. “My concern is 10 years down the road, we have water intrusion into the building. For the price we’re paying for this building, I don’t want a patched-up job. I think we need to tear it down and start over again. ”
While extreme, Herbst argued it was the best and only long-term solution to avoid winding up with another moldy building similar to the outdated police station already being replaced.
“Twenty or 30 years from now, unless you’re putting in a performance bond that’s going to stay in effect, companies go out of business,” he said. “I worry that down the road, we’re going to be experiencing problems, and we may or may not have anybody that we can hold accountable.”
Herbst told the South Florida Sun Sentinel he’s not worried about the building collapsing, but he is concerned about leaks and mold problems .
Herbst’s colleagues on the commission don’t want to see the building knocked down but did express concern over cost increases and construction delays.
Fort Lauderdale’s new three-story police station is expected to open in mid-October 2025.
The project didn’t break ground until June 2023, four years after voters approved a $100 million bond. By then, the price had ballooned from $100 million to $145 million due to rising labor and construction costs.
The total price is now approaching $150 million, partly because of the bending roof slab.
Fort Lauderdale hired an independent engineer to help come up with a fix. Commissioners say they don’t want taxpayers to foot the bill.
“This is on the development team,” Herbst told the Sun Sentinel on Wednesday. “This is their error. This is not on the city’s dime. If they have to tear it down and redo it, they’d be paying for it.”
On Tuesday night, the commission approved more than $2 million in change orders to the project.
Herbst cast the only no vote.
“I am not paying Moss & Associates (the builder) to fix a defect made by AECOM (the design team),” he told the Sun Sentinel. “That’s between the two of them.”
During the commission’s Tuesday afternoon meeting, Herbst said he wanted to make sure any extra work required to fix the cracking problem was not on the city’s dime.
Said Assistant City Manager Anthony Fajardo: “We’ll have to pay for the work to get done and then recoup the costs associated with that. We’ll be asking Moss to procure those materials. So we’ve got to pay them for that.”
Herbst objected.
“Why doesn’t AECOM pay Moss directly?” he asked. “We should not be a conduit between AECOM and Moss for any (design) errors. I don’t want to be fronting money and then having to go and collect it from somebody else for mistakes made on their part.”
Herbst also wanted to know why the commission wasn’t informed of the problem in March when city staff found out. Instead, the commission learned of the problem in mid-June.
“The subcontractor alerted Moss,” Fajardo told the commission during a meeting in June. “At first, they were telling us this isn’t a big deal. This isn’t something you need to worry about. It’s not causing any kind of imminent structural collapse of the building.”
The original design of the building called for steel, Fajardo told the commission. That was later changed to poured concrete with panels.
“When that changed, there was a massive change in the weight of the building,” Fajardo said. “Recalculations needed to happen throughout the building.”
The engineers have not found any structural design problems in the rest of the building, Fajardo noted.
Commissioners found out about the problem after getting a June 14 memo from Acting City Manager Susan Grant.
“The deflection of the roof slab in this area does not pose an immediate threat to the structural integrity of the building, however, from what has been explained by the city’s Building Services team and various engineers working on the project, this deflection does have the potential to cause issues after the building is completed and occupied,” Grant wrote. “These may include the displacement of glazing allowing for water intrusion and additional structural repairs needed as time passes. This may impact warranty claims and other forms of remedies if not suitably addressed at this time.”
Crews enlarged two columns with haunches and increased the footings below those to add support, city officials say. The roof slab is being consistently monitored and is within acceptable tolerances, according to the experts.
“No remediation of hairline cracks is required,” commissioners were told. “Minor stress cracks are within acceptable tolerances.”
The mayor was not convinced.
“It just seems like we’re patching this up,” he said Tuesday night. “Are we deserving of this kind of product after spending $150 million? I just want you to know that question remains out there.”
Fajardo told the commission the city had set aside $2 million to cover extra unexpected costs.
“We are out of our contingency,” Fajardo said before explaining more money now needs to be set aside to cover any future unexpected costs.
The mayor didn’t like what he was hearing.
“There has to be a cap on this,” Trantalis said. “You can’t keep coming back to us and saying, ‘We need more money.’ We have no more money. And we’re not going to borrow any more.”
Later in the meeting, he again made the point about keeping an eye on costs.
“This is not carte blanche for this police station,” he said. “We need to be very careful with our money. We’re being nickeled-and-dimed here to the tune of millions of dollars. We need to put a cap on this at some point.”
Susannah Bryan can be reached at sbryan@sunsentinel.com . Follow me on X @Susannah_Bryan
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