During last night’s Conshohocken Borough Council meeting, members of council were presented with almost an extra million dollars in costs associated with redeveloping the Verizon Building into a borough hall and police station. From a report in the Times Herald:

Borough council was presented Wednesday night with an estimated, $949,096 increase in the cost of renovating the former Verizon building from the developer — an increase from $10,457,299 to $11,406,395 — for the new borough offices, police station and office and retail spaces.

“We are juggling scope, schedule and budget. We need to have the facade complete and under roof before winter,” said William Glazer, the president of Keystone Property Group (KPG) of Lower Merion. “If we miss a couple weeks in the bid process, we miss four months because the construction start would shift to 2015.”

The Times Herald goes on to report that Borough Council authorized the Borough’s engineer to create some alternate bids, which could alter the current plan to reduce costs. Members of council asked why the costs have gone up. From the Times Herald:

Councilman Matt Ryan asked why the “finish” line item jumped from a $237,376 to $1,349,707. Glazer said the previous cost estimate assumed a $50-per-square-foot cost, but the current building design dictated costs of $90 per square foot. Glazer said the first estimate was not based on the final design because those details were still being finalized by council and borough officials.

Council President Paul McConnell questioned why the electrical line item went from $367,722 to $780,272. Jamie Rash, the KRP project manager, said that increase came from larger costs for tenant fit out and an $80,000 emergency generator that is required for the police department and borough offices.

A commercial real estate expert we spoke with this morning told us that in the Conshohocken market the average is usually $100 a square foot get a building to shell and then an additional $50 a square foot to outfit office space for the tenant.

Will be interesting to see how this plays out