Pushing back against rising construction prices, the city of Lakeville and its project team have been sharpening their pencils to reduce the cost of the roughly $25 million FiRST Center, a planned regional training facility for first responders throughout the south metro.
City officials and a project team that includes RJM Construction and Leo A Daly said they have identified savings to trim the project’s estimated cost from about $25.8 million to $24.7 million. Roughly half of those savings stem from a 3,000-square-foot reduction in training space on the first and second levels.
What’s more, the project is saving about $5 million by not having to follow the state’s B3 (Buildings, Benchmarks and Beyond) Guidelines, Allyn Kuennen, Lakeville’s assistant city administrator, said in an interview. B3 Guidelines are designed to make buildings more energy efficient and sustainable.
In 2023, the Legislature awarded $7.1 million in cash for the project. State-funded projects typically are required to meet B3 standards, but Kuennen said the B3 requirement in this case only applies to projects funded with state bonding dollars, not cash awards.
“Because we received the $7.1 million through the cash grant funding process, we did not need to comply with B3 standards,” Kuennen said.
Curt Yoakum, a spokesman for the Minnesota Department of Administration, said in an email Thursday that “language included in last year’s cash bonding bill (Chapter 72) applied the B3 requirements only to state agencies, Minnesota State Colleges and Universities, and the University of Minnesota projects funded in that bill.”
Besides the state money, FiRST Center funding sources include $17.7 million from the city and $800,000 from the federal government.
Even without reaching B3 standards, the Lakeville building will be efficient, Kuennen said. The state’s SB Sustainable Building 2030 (SB 2030) program requires buildings to be at least 80% more efficient than a comparable building in existence in 2003. Kuennen said the Lakeville building will land at about 75%.
Members of the project team updated the City Council on the project Tuesday. The council didn’t take formal action.
In a press release, the city said the roughly 40,000-square-foot building will be a “pivotal regional public safety training facility catering to public safety personnel in the south metro area and neighboring cities and counties.” The building will rise within the Lakeville Airlake Industrial Park on the former Lakeville Public Works property.
Featuring “physical and virtual” training areas, the building will include classroom and meeting spaces, tactical training facilities for fire, police and EMS, and a firing range, the city said, adding that it will give first responders the opportunity to “simulate realistic scenarios.”
Public safety personnel in the area currently rely on local businesses, schools and temporary facilities for training “due to the absence of a permanent facility meeting all their training and classroom requirements,” according to the city.
“The main reason we’re constructing it is there’s no training facility south of the river for Apple Valley, Farmington, Lakeville, Elko New Market, Northfield even places as far away as Owatonna,” said Kuennen, who added that 12 to 18 agencies have shown interest in using the facility.
Design work on the project will continue throughout 2024. The city expects construction to begin in April 2025 and wrap up a year later.
RELATED: State fields design proposals for $48M crime lab in Mankato
Copyright © 2024 BridgeTower Media. All Rights Reserved.
Most Popular
Comments / 0