HILLSDALE, N.J.—The borough engineer said the slightly more than $6 million renovation of Memorial Field should be completed in September, pushing the original June completion date back a few months.
Much of the delay was due to severe winter weather and unanticipated changes that arose during construction, said Nick Chelius, borough engineer with Colliers Engineering & Design.
Chelius said the contractor has set a “target date” of Aug. 10 to begin installing Pivot artificial turf at the field. “That’s what they’re targeting right now,” Chelius told the council at its July 14 meeting.
In addition to weather-related setbacks, Chelius said the completion delays are due to “the little things” that take several days or a week to finish. He likened the field renovation to a home-improvement project that expands before it is completed.
He said installing the synthetic turf will take about two weeks. After that, the contractor will pave the parking lots. Field striping and additional landscaping will follow in September to complete the improvements.
Councilman Clemente Osso noted that change orders Nos. 7 through 12, included in a resolution on the agenda, raised the project’s cost to more than $6 million. The resolution lists change orders totaling $64,397, raising the current project cost from $5,969,189.09 to $6,033,586.80.
Osso questioned Chelius about possible savings on an additional $113,000 cost for clean soil brought to the site. Chelius said some savings had occurred. He estimated that approximately $30,000 to $40,000 might be saved because truckloads of clean soil were brought in from other sites where CED was managing construction and excavation.
Chelius said about 50 to 70 truckloads of clean soil were brought in from other sites, reducing costs. He said the delivery manifests will show the actual number of trucks that entered the site and noted that overall soil costs would be reduced.
Chelius said the increase in project costs was “not a huge amount” and that the project’s overall budget was “pretty close to the original budget.” Administrator Mike Ghassali told the council that available funding sources would cover the budget increases.