Homeless are biggest losers in vote to raze Annex
There are no winners in the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors’ recent 3-2 vote to demolish the old San Jose City Hall Annex.
The taxpayers lose an asset of more than $10 million. The county loses the opportunity our team put forth to help them create a new model for public-private business. We all lose the $16 million gift (and likely more from others if we had moved forward with the project) from the Sobrato Foundation.
But the biggest losers of all are the homeless. We could have renovated the Annex to house up to 150 single men and women and at least 16 families.
My frustration with the county’s action is that the administration never took the time to thoroughly consider our proposal.
The county’s claim that the Annex was at the end of its useful life was not backed by one iota of testing to verify the conclusion. The county report read more like an insurance replacement estimate than a full evaluation of the building.
County Chief Operating Officer Miguel Marquez told this newspaper in August that renovating the Annex would cost between $70 million and $100 million. That is more than $1,000 a square foot. We could not find any comps that are even close to this number. It might apply to renovating a nuclear power plant, but in all of our years of experience, no comps come close to the county’s Annex numbers.
Marquez has also claimed there was $4 million in water damage to the building. But he was not able to produce a copy of an insurance claim to back that number.
The approach reflects a pat- tern echoed by Supervisor Dave Cortese and deputy director of facilities Dave Snow: Keep using the same, tired lines about the condition of the Annex until the vote was taken.
The same misdirection applies to the county estimate of demolishing the building and putting in a parking lot. Mar- quez and Snow said it would cost less than $2 million. But the facts show a total cost of $5.46 million (demolition contract, $1.37 million, with a contingency of $340,000; abatement contract, $390,000; and the temporary parking lot, $3.36 million).
Why the mendacity? I wish we knew. The entire process of trying to do something for the good of the people was met with obstruction, redacted documents, nondisclosure agreements and misinformation.
It got me to thinking about all of the problems county management had with contractors building the 168-bed, six-story Valley Medical Center facility. In discussing the loss of $126 million, consultants said: “While the draft report by construction consultant Boldt did not directly blame county officials or contractor Turner Construction for the delays and cost overruns, it suggested the county’s management of the project was flawed.”
Maybe it is time to revisit the way business is conducted in the public sector.
We tried, but the only people interested in truly engaging with us and wanting more answers to the disparity in numbers were Supervisors Ken Yeager and Joe Simitian. So now we will not have the opportunity to provide temporary housing for a significant number of the homeless. And we lose 22 trees and replace lawn with a parking lot wasteland adjacent to First Street.
The day we were allowed in to study the Annex we saw a homeless man sleeping in the shadow of the building. He disappeared the next day. Sadly, like so many others, he is likely still looking for a home.