Award $10.8M Contract for Town Hall Rebuild - YES

After years of careful planning and community engagement, this vote marked the beginning of Corte Madera's journey toward a new Town Hall!

I voted to award a contract for construction of the new Town Hall, based on the plans and specifications we approved unanimously at our January 18th meeting, to Alten Construction. Alten was the lowest responsible bidder on the project, and their bid of $10,820,000 came in nearly a million dollars below our engineer's estimate of what the project would cost—an impressive feat to begin with, but especially so in this hyper-volatile construction market.

With supply chain issues and inflation causing major price escalations throughout the building industry, I was fully prepared to shelve this project for as long as needed if it came in wildly over-budget. The fact that it didn't is a testament to a well-crafted and documented design that left little in question for contractors.

The plans for the new Town Hall were developed through an extensive public process over the last 3+ years, and I am incredibly grateful to all the Town staff and community members who dedicated thousands of hours of their time to making sure we got it right.

While the demolition of our much-loved Town Hall will be bittersweet in many ways, Corte Maderans should be excited to kiss the mold, leaks, and asbestos of the old building goodbye, as we prepare to build a new civic center that will serve our community for decades to come!