At the Oak Park village board meeting Dec. 3, trustees approved an agreement with Johnson Lasky Kindelin Architects, Inc. for schematic design services for Village Hall and a new police station in an amount not to exceed $1.85 million.
This won’t be one and done, either. The schematic design will not be the final design. During this phase, JLK will help determine the scope and overall vision for the project, along with a more realistic cost estimate. This is commonly thought of as 30% of design plans.
Trustees decided Nov. 21 to direct village staff to negotiate this agreement with JLK to produce a schematic design for a Village Hall remodel and new police station on the existing site.
The schematic design phase is expected to wrap up in mid-March. Sproule explained that village staff and JLK will renegotiate the fee for the schematic design phase if the scope of the project changes significantly, like a large cost reduction.
In this phase, JLK will provide three potential schemes for the project.
“This project will be successful because we will know how much it costs and we will also know when it will cost that much,” said Meg Kindelin, president of JLK.
Remodeling Village Hall and building a new police station was last estimated to cost between $132 million and $138.3 million. Public Works Director Rob Sproule said village staff negotiated the agreement with JLK based on an estimate of the project costing $120 million, but some trustees were still dissatisfied by that number.
“When we approved the negotiation with JLK, I was not expecting it to still be a $120 million estimate,” Trustee Ravi Parakkat said, adding that he’s heard pushback from community members. “All this is delaying the process of getting the much-needed police facility.”
Most board members said they want to prioritize building a new police station first.
“We all understand that [the] police station is a priority for the project but there are very large-scale decisions that need to be made about the police station and how it interacts with this site that the board needs to provide direction on before we can start constructing that building,” Sproule said. “This process is what gets us to that point.”
And the $120 million estimate is partially based on board priorities, Sproule said. That includes preserving historical aspects of Village Hall, meeting sustainability goals, meeting building codes, creating accessible and inclusive spaces, and bringing both facilities up to modern standards. The total project cost is still yet to be determined, however.
Trustee Brian Straw said he believes JLK will be making decisions with the cost of the project and the board’s priorities in mind. He said he thinks the board can expect design schemes focused on delivering a high value proposition, and Kindelin agreed.
Village President Vicki Scaman added that she doesn’t want this board’s decisions regarding the campus to be a “Band-Aid.”
“I’ve watched previous boards make decisions without taking the entire campus into mind and waste money,” she said. “We’re not doing that and I’m proud of the process that we have landed on.”