County Courthouse may soon be finished?
By Gregg Wendorf
Advance News Journal
For months now, some of the rumors, the chismé, floating around haven’t been good — the Hidalgo County Courthouse won’t be finished before next Christmas (2024).
You mean the $180-million new courthouse that was supposed to have been occupied back in late 2021?
Yeah, that one, but who’s counting months, years. Point is, it’s still not open for business, and people — the public, county staff, the courts — would like to know when the new building will officially open.
According to Hidalgo County Judge Richard Cortez, who is also the former mayor of McAllen, the good news is, it could be open in as little as three months. No guarantees, but certainly at least some hope for a change.
The contractor, the Morganti Group (Morganti Texas), had completely walked off the job earlier this year, but is now once again in negotiations with the county, Cortez said.
Some additional good news, said the judge: the problems with the roof and the windows are less severe than originally thought. Meaning, the remedial work can be accomplished sooner rather than later.
“The architect and the engineer seem to think there is a faster solution,” said Cortez.
Indeed, things have picked up steam compared to this summer, early fall, when things at the new county edifice were still stalled. The lights inside the courthouse remained on, day and night, perhaps for security purposes, but certainly no one was home.
The only action on courthouse property, so to speak, was when a suspected drunk drove his pickup into the AC unit at the old courthouse one early Friday morning last April, putting pressure on county workmen to get the unit up and running before the courthouse opened Monday morning. The crash only helped underscore the question: when is the new place going to open?
The question was always in the air. Even four months ago, the county’s grand hope — a new courthouse, updated from the present one which opened in 1954 — still stood empty four-plus years after construction on it began; but in the end, cooler heads prevailed, and rather than turning everything entirely over to “Legal,” county officials began meeting with Morganti Texas, trying to bring them back not only to the table, but to the job itself. By then, their crews, after all, had walked off the job, seemingly at odds with county demands.
“We started meeting, though,” said Cortez, “and I said, ‘Give us your best estimate (time) based on constraints and obstacles.”
Then the county asked for a timeline — how long to completion.
“That didn’t always work well,” said the judge, “because then the county had to listen to — ‘We can’t give you a timeline until this is completed.’” Nonetheless, the good news is that the two parties — the county and the courthouse contractor — are now sitting down together at the table, trying to figure out how to get the job up and running. For both parties, the mantra is the same — the sooner, the better.
“We are working well with the contractor now,” said Cortez, “and we have identified critical issues (needed) to finish the job.”
From the start of these recent discussions, Cortez said the county needed two lists. One, a list of the critical issues that need addressing to reach a substantial job completion. Second, a punch list.
“And really, a third — an estimation as to when the courthouse will be finished.”
For his part, Hidalgo County Judge Cortez said it’s wrong for people to blame “us” (the current county commissioners court), because the contract was executed while a previous administration was in place. According to Cortez, the contract came with little recourse should the job head south.
Such as? “Financial damages.” According to Cortez, one problem related to this job is the issue of change orders.
When he was mayor of McAllen, which saw the completion of at least two big-ticket items under his watch, the McAllen Convention Center and the Anzalduas Bridge, both of which came in on time, and on budget, Cortez said, the system was laid out well, because there will always be differences when it came to change orders.
“The city would hire a designer, a builder, and when change orders came along, we’d ask why do we have change orders. If it was a design problem, we’d have to punish the designer. Whoever was responsible for a mistake would pay to remedy the mistake. If there is going to be blame for something, that blame would be very specific.”
We had value engineering, Cortez said, which would either add or subtract from the total cost.
“Plus, I had Jan Klinck, who would look over every change order. We were set up, with a designer, a contractor, a project manager, the architect, who would oversee the contractor, plus a supervisor, plus the subcontractors (who were reviewing the work as it progressed).”
For those who may have never heard of it, “Value Engineering” is a systematic, organized approach to providing necessary functions in a project at the lowest cost. (Source: Investopedia.com.) It promotes the substitution of materials and methods with less expensive alternatives, without sacrificing functionality. Not to sound too dry, but it’s primarily focused on the use, cost, esteem, and exchange values. (More from Investopedia.com.)
In other words, it’s not supposed to ever end up the way this new Hidalgo County Courthouse has ended: almost two years behind its initial scheduled opening; its doors, still locked.
Good news, though, said Cortez, to underscore the point, is that there is progress now being made on the courthouse, and some light at the end of this long tunnel is just beginning to show.