Edgewood City Hall mislocated during construction

EDGEWOOD — The new City Hall in this suburb east of Tacoma is not being built where it was planned, and officials want to know why.

Babbit Neuman Construction workers miscalculated the baseline for the building because of a surveying error, causing it to be off by 13 feet, 4 inches, project manager Matt Nagel told the town council last month.

On Tuesday, the council is expected to hear proposals from architects on how to proceed and more details about how the problem happened.

Officials are still gauging how the mistake might affect the City Hall project, which is to be completed by October, Public Works Director Dave Lorenzen said.

"A lot of it is saying, 'OK, who screwed up, and what can we do to fix it?' " Lorenzen said.

Because the new building is so much closer to a road being laid on its northern side, architects must relocate a transformer and generator, he said.

Council members rejected the architects' original suggestion to move one or both into a parking lot.

"That was not acceptable," Mayor Jeff Hogan said.

Babbit Neuman is responsible for any additional costs, Lorenzen said.

Nagel didn't return calls for comment from The News Tribune in the past week.

The $7.2 million building will be Edgewood's first comprehensive administrative headquarters.

Since the municipality was incorporated in 1996, the council has met in a church basement and municipal operations have been handled out of a manufactured building sometimes dubbed "the trailer."

Lorenzen said the building should still be completed on schedule.

"I don't think it's an insurmountable problem," council member Paul Crowley said. "We clearly would have preferred that the building be built in the correct location, but given that it's not, we have to work with that."