Price tag for Fleuve-Montagne over $56.6 million
Exceeds latest official tally for project by more than $1.2 million
The city has approved spending at least $56.68 million for the Fleuve-Montagne walkway, an amount that exceeds the latest official price tag for the project by more than $1.2 million, an examination by the Montreal Gazette has found.
As the newspaper reported on Wednesday, the city says its “legacy” project for Montreal’s 375th anniversary celebrations this year, which is to be finished and inaugurated on Monday, is to come in at the last cost it confirmed a year ago — $55.4 million.
The project is just about finished, with the final portion of the walkway, along McTavish St., 90 per cent completed.
However, a tally of municipal contracts for the Fleuve-Montagne project found in the city’s publicly searchable contracts database shows the work tops $56 million.
The figure includes all taxes, contingencies and incidentals on the contracts as well as a potential bonus of $287,437 for the entrepreneur working on one of the contracts.
All of the contracts were awarded between 2015 and 2017.
The search found 40 contracts ranging in price from $1,292 to $17.6 million using the words “Fleuve-Montagne” as a search term. Another seven contracts awarded between 2015 and 2017 and worth between $2,047 and $17,637 were found using the words “Promenade urbaine.”
The city awarded nearly $56.2 million in work for FleuveMontagne since 2015. Another $494,000 was spent on the project before 2015, the city’s 2015-2017 capital-works program shows.
Last year, the city offered $55.4 million as the new cost for the 3.8-kilometre walkway from the Old Port to Mount Royal after the Montreal Gazette revealed overruns that had pushed the price several million dollars over its last budget of $42.4 million.
The city blamed most of the $13-million overrun on a decision to carry out urgent underground infrastructure repair on certain roads along the walkway.
The budget was increased mainly to conduct complex infrastructure work on McTavish, between des Pins Ave. and Sherbrooke St. W. and on Sherbrooke St. W., city spokesperson Linda Boutin said on Wednesday. At the same time, however, the winning bids on some of the construction contracts came in at 17 per cent to 21.5 per cent above the city’s internal estimate for the work.
The $42.4-million budget last year was already $11 million above an initial forecast of $31.4 million in the previous year’s municipal capital-works program.
The walkway was originally scheduled to be completed by May 17, the anniversary of Montreal’s founding in 1642.
As of Wednesday, the city had not yet explained the discrepancy between its final figure and the tally of contracts related to the project in the city’s database.
The city’s $55.4-million figure includes $3.17 million to pay municipal employees in Montreal’s large parks department who worked on the Fleuve-Montagne project, an internal city document obtained by the Gazette shows. The breakdown includes $7.89 million for external consultants and $44.35 million for construction and related work to create the walkway.
The Gazette examination found that some of the resolutions that were passed by elected officials to award the contracts added the contingencies and incidentals to the winning bid, while other resolutions were in the amount of the winning bid alone. The contingencies and incidentals were indicated separately in those cases.
The city scaled back the scope of work on McGill College Ave. at the request of the Montreal Fire Department, Boutin said on Wednesday. For safety reasons, the fire department asked the city not to close two lanes of traffic to create a garden as was initially planned, she said. However, the city added public terraces on the west side of the street and added street furniture, she said.
The budget for the McGill College portion of the walkway has remained at $900,000 despite the change to the plans, Boutin said. While the garden has been reduced to one lane, she said, the public terrace was added.