City council asks for final cost for plaza project

After Public Works Director Joe Leach delivered an update on the status of the Pardi Market Plaza project, the Dixon City Council directed staff to come back with a cost to complete the project.

The city is in the process of developing a plaza in a vacant lot at the corner of South First and East A streets which once served as the home of the Pardi Market grocery store and a series of service stations. After the demolition of both properties in the ‘90s, discussions began taking place over how to redevelop the space. In the meantime, it began serving as a gravel parking lot until last fall when groundbreaking began on a mutli-phase project that would result in a community plaza featuring a bandstand, clock tower, pedestrian walkways, pergolas, 20 parking spaces and more.

Leach said that Mayor Thom Bogue requested an update to the project and what it would take to finish it. Leach said the most current appropriated budget for the project was a little more than $1.9 million, which would include vehicular and pedestrian pavers, permanent lighting along the southern and eastern portions of the project, permanent shade structures, trash enclosures and receptacles, gravel in the future bandstand, bike racks and 21 vehicular parking stalls. It would not include planting.

Leach said he could not give a definitive answer on what it would take to finish the project, which has been in the planning stages for the last few years.

“The project has evolved since even before it was awarded and since it’s been awarded,” he said.

Leach said that much of the budget so far has been spent on services such as contracting and materials, leaving about $150,000 that has not been appropriated. He said the full buildout that was initially approved the council in 2017 was $3.2 million but did not have an answer as to how much it would take to finish the project.

“I can’t tell you definitively what it’s gonna take to get there because things have changed since then,” he said.

Leach suggested three options for the council to move forward: authorize a cap on how much the city wants to spend on the next phase and then allowing staff to work with a consulting team and bring back a solution to be bid on, direct staff to provide estimates for certain tasks such as planting or the shade structure or something in between.

Councilman Devon Minnema said that when action was first taken on the project, the initial idea was to complete the first phase of the project and then reassess it. He still supported this process.

“This is such a huge project, and it’s coming out of the General Fund,” he said. “The last thing we as a council should be doing is biting into the apple of the sunk cost fallacy.”

Minnema was referring to a fallacy in which people opt to continue a pursuit because time or money has been invested in it.

“The risk with that is you end up throwing good money after bad,” he said.

Minnema suggested completing the first phase and then reassessing if this was “the best use of public funds.”

Councilman Jim Ernest agreed that the project was expensive but suggested finding avenues to conserve money along the way, including having community service groups handle the gardens or having the proposed bandstand serve a dual use such as a table during a farmers market.

Vice Mayor Steve Bird suggested a portable stage be privately funded by event organizers like with Grillin’ and Chillin’.

“Having that much concrete raised (for a bandstand) is rather expensive,” he said.

Bogue said he did not want an unfinished lot.

“One of the worst things that you can actually do is to piecemeal a project over years,” he said. “Ultimately, you end up inconveniencing people even further because you’ve now made it to where people could use it temporarily again, then you’ve gotta go back and undo what you’ve done as a temporary basis in order to make it permanent.”

“We’re not considering changing midstream to do something else,” he added.

Councilman Scott Pederson agreed.

“We need to get this project finished, final, done and complete,” he said.

Pederson suggested Leach come back with a cost to finish the project in an expeditious way.

In other business, the council unanimously approved a resolution adopting tentative maps for the Homestead development.