Juvenile Hall Expansion Held Captive by Delays
SYLMAR — Expansion of the Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall into the nation’s largest youth detention facility is more than two years behind schedule, delayed by a combination of construction troubles, miscommunications and the 1994 Northridge earthquake.
In response, frustrated Los Angeles County officials this month have taken the unusual step of fining the project contractor $5,000 a day until the 160-room expansion is completed. The construction firm, Irvine-based Swinerton & Walberg, says county planners are partly to blame for delays.
The $26.2-million project was supposed to be done by December 1994. But the opening date has been changed half a dozen times and is now set for the end of June.
The delays come as the county struggles to cope with a juvenile justice system so severely overcrowded that many youths must sleep on the floor. Even when the new wing is completed, more beds will be needed.
Told of the delays, Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich said this week he will call leaders of the county Probation Department and the Department of Public Works before the Board of Supervisors to explain.
“We know that one year’s delay was caused by the earthquake,†said Antonovich. “We want to know about the other reasons.â€
The new wing at Nidorf Juvenile Hall--until recently named the San Fernando Juvenile Hall--was approved by the board in 1990, in response to a surge in the juvenile crime rate. For years, officials of the county Probation Department, responsible for juvenile halls, have complained about having exceeded the sleeping capacity of cells built for only one.
In the past four years, the county’s juvenile hall population has grown 21% to about 2,000 youths.
The county’s three juvenile halls also house youths who are increasingly violent, with a higher proportion of murderers, rapists, robbers and kidnappers than the county jail system.
The increase in youth offenders has hampered county efforts to keep pace.
“If you are starting [to build] a juvenile prison today, it will be overcrowded by the time it’s finished,†said Sidney Ware, a director at the county Probation Department who is monitoring the Sylmar project. “We don’t run the Sheraton, so we can’t say there’s no vacancy when the police come around.â€
Acting Chief Probation Officer Walt Kelly agreed the Nidorf expansion project will not solve the system’s overcrowding. But he said the additional space will allow the most dangerous offenders to be kept together.
The Nidorf project has been beset by problems since January 1994, when the county awarded the construction contract to Swinerton & Walberg, one of the nation’s largest general contractors with experience building jails. The project was to be completed by November of that year.
But days later, the Northridge earthquake hit, forcing the evacuation of the existing facility’s 700 juveniles, including many who had been sleeping on mattresses on floors.
The quake also led to the toughening of city and state seismic building standards, prompting higher costs and delays of more than a year.
“Immediately after the earthquake, everybody kind of froze,†said Gary Tse, a county Department of Public Works official managing the project.
County officials began imposing contractor fines on May 1, maintaining that Swinerton had more than enough time to finish despite the quake-imposed setback. They allege the firm failed to keep enough workers on the job and did not keep them working a full day.
“We’re concerned that by 3 p.m., they are off-site,†said Tse. “They’ve tried to increase the number in the last month or two. But before, what I heard was that they were not staffing to a responsible level. . . . I’m puzzled at this. I’ve done this a long time and I haven’t seen anything quite like this before.â€
Swinerton officials deny the charge. They say work has been hampered by the county making changes to its original plans.
Additionally, Swinerton officials claim that the county provided an inaccurate map of the area and did not respond to their questions in a timely manner.
Michael Hughes, Swinerton’s senior project manager, said the county’s faulty map forced the contractor to reposition a planned parking garage away from a slope that would have caused flooding in the building.
Even though no concrete had been poured, the change was expensive and time consuming, forcing changes in nearby storm drain and sewer systems. The extra cost for moving the garage about five feet was $500,000, according to county documents.
“We build based on the county drawings,†Hughes said. “We have to assume that the county information is accurate.â€
Another problem was the facility’s smoke detectors. The county originally rejected a subcontractor’s advice they put a detector in each of the cells. When state inspectors ordered the installation, the county faced added costs for delays in ordering the devices.
The dispute over the Nidorf hall expansion may wind up in court after the project is finally finished--exactly what county officials had hoped to avoid when they awarded the contract to Swinerton.
The agreement, a so-called design/build contract, allowed the county to reduce its liability by holding the contractor responsible for subcontractors and cost overruns.
The county was not required to accept the lowest bid because of a state exemption for the construction of juvenile detention facilities. So the county had expected fewer headaches than most county construction projects.
“We get so many low-ball bids, we don’t have control over quality,†said Tse. “But this way, once they know about it, they can’t point fingers. They are responsible for it.â€
Swinerton’s plans appeared to be the best of the nine proposals received by the county, in addition to the being the least expensive, county officials said.
But so far, the project has cost about $3 million more than expected. Two-thirds of the $26.2-million cost will be paid by Proposition 86, a state initiative to expand funding for the juvenile justice system.
Last year, the county Board of Supervisors approved the sale of $8.7 million in bonds to pay its share of the expansion. About $2 million of the cost overruns will be paid by expanding the bond debt. About $1 million will be saved from the project’s overall cost because officials canceled a proposed school expansion on the site.
Repayment of the bonds will come from the Probation Department’s budget at a cost of $1 million a year.
Neither the county nor the contractor have said whether they plan to file lawsuits to recover costs.
Swinerton officials would not say whether they plan to appeal the county fines, only that they have been hobbled by the county bureaucracy.
“It’s been frustrating,†said Hughes. “Any project where you don’t finish on time is frustrating, but my job is to overcome the frustration.â€
He acknowledged the project has been subject to “some unusual circumstances that are really no one’s fault.â€
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