Price rises for UT Student Union project
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The timeline for completing the University of Tennessee’s new Student Union complex isn’t the only thing about the project that’s increasing: so is its cost.
The State Building Commission last week approved another $4.14 million increase in the total cost, to $181.74 million.
When the commission first approved the project in 2008, its cost was estimated at $116.6 million. But that was before the Recession settled in, cutting state revenue and delaying the project for more than three years. It was also before design plans were approved and construction bids were opened.
By the time its design was approved in 2011 and its size increased by 30 percent, to 390,000 square feet, the cost was pegged at $160 million. In 2012 it jumped to $167.6 million. In July 2015, the commission approved a $10 million increase, to $177.6 million, to cover the costs of “unforeseen abatement, poor soil conditions, utility relocation, user-requested design changes and for awarding bids that are higher than were estimated,” according to minutes of the meeting.
When demolition of the old University Center parking garage started in March 2012, finally marking the start of work, UT said it would take about four years — to 2016 — to complete the entire project, to be built in two phases.
The target for overall completion is now during the spring of 2018.
Students who were freshmen on the campus when construction began in the spring of 2012 graduated in May 2015 just before the first, smaller part of the new Student Union opened on June 1, 2015, on Phillip Fulmer Drive. They endured the construction without enjoying, as students, its benefits: the new Vol Shop, bookstore, colorful dining and career services facilities and outdoor plaza that comprise the first phase.
If the larger second phase opens as now scheduled in 2018, construction will have spanned seven classes of UT graduates — from the Class of 2012 through the Class of 2018 — a period marked by the largest number of major construction and renovation projects on the Knoxville campus since the 1960s.
“Construction of the new Student Union will cause some headaches for all of us,” UT Knoxville Chancellor Jimmy Cheek told the campus community in early 2012. “In the end, the new Student Union will be well worth the wait and the temporary challenges presented by the construction.”
UT President Joe DiPietro and State Architect Peter Heimbach told the State Building Commission on Thursday that the building’s longer-than-anticipated construction schedule resulted from unforeseen construction and soil conditions and the desire to keep part of the old University Center open during construction of the first phase.
“We’ve had problems with the kind of soil and the ability to put in the proper foundations,” DiPietro said. “I don’t know if we had sinkhole problems there, but we’ve had those before. And the scope of this project expanded, from the standpoint of Student Affairs and what they wanted to deliver there. But largely it’s been the fact that, constructionwise, it’s been much harder to build than expected. We tore down half the student center and built that and now we’re on the second half, and the two pieces will come together.”