Uptown garage opening delayed ’til winter – Sedona Red Rock News

City commits $3.7M to water main upgrades and Forest Road sidewalk improvements to State Route 89A

The money will continue to flow to support opening the delayed Uptown parking garage, which is now expected to open in December or January.

Sedona City Council voted 6-0 on Aug. 25 — with Councilwoman Melissa Dunn absent — to approve a Memorandum of Understanding with Arizona Water Co. and the Sedona Fire District, along with a related $3,741,285.50 contract with J. Banicki Construction Inc. to bring the long-delayed garage closer to its opening.

About $2.54 million of the contract covers previously planned Forest Road improvements, while roughly $1.2 million funds water-system upgrades that will be integrated into AWC’s infrastructure.

“Once we upgrade the size of the [water] line, it drops those velocities down and brings us into a safe condition,” Deputy City Manager Andy Dickey said.

Additionally, a voluntary $60,000 to $80,000 sprinkler system for the garage’s electric vehicle charging area is anticipated to be completed through a minor construction contract within City Manager Anette Spickard’s spending authority.

“The current garage project cost is approximately $28.25 million, including the approximately $1.2 million McCarthy settlement previously approved by Council,” on Aug. 11, Dickey stated after the meeting. “There was no additional garage construction cost approved at Tuesday’s meeting.”

Work to resolve structural issues with the garage’s external serpentine facade was scheduled to wrap up on Aug. 25, according to city staff during the meeting.

Phase 2 of the project was not authorized Tuesday. That potential future phase includes extending the water main upgrades up Van Deren Road and across Schnebly Road to Jordan Road, upsizing the city’s line from 6 to 8 inches.

Phase 2 is estimated to cost about $2.5 million, with construction potentially starting next summer at the earliest and finishing in December 2027.

The Forest Road improvements include a sidewalk on the north and south sides from the garage to the existing sidewalks connecting to State Route 89A.

‘Under Pressure’

Dickey told council that water moves through the 6-inch main feeding the garage’s sprinkler lines faster than plumbing codes allow, requiring new 10-inch pipe to be installed. AWC has elected to install a 16-inch main and cover the incremental cost.

“The higher the velocity, the more it can scour, or you might say it’s kind of like rubbing sandpaper on the inside of the pipe,” Dickey later said. “So, the higher that velocity, the more it has a tendency to scour that pipe.”

AWC identified its water velocity criterion for the garage during a Feb. 18 meeting with the city, a determination that required additional hydrant flow testing and the creation of a hydraulic model of AWC’s system.

“The initial modeling was completed in late June and then refined based on comments from AWC,” Dickey wrote. On July 13, AWC asked that the model be expanded to evaluate a much larger portion of the Uptown distribution system, which required additional system information.

“The expanded analysis was completed July 16. That analysis identified high velocities in multiple existing 4-inch and 6-inch water mains and also identified differences between the actual system configuration and the information previously available for the modeling. That was when the extent of the existing system issue and the need for broader water system improvements became clear.”

Five members of the public spoke on the garage’s water issues, and a question common to both them and the council was why the problem wasn’t known sooner.

“We didn’t have the ability to rely on that information being there ahead of time, and we did our due diligence through the design process,” Dickey told the NEWS. He noted the modeling gap came from not having AWC’s system details. “It’s just what we learned in going through all of that. We realized later that it changed the project cost and scope, and that just wasn’t foreseeable, just based on the conditions that we were under in the moment.”

According to Vice Mayor Brian Fultz, the silver lining is that potential new water projects will reduce future AWC rate hikes to Sedona customers.

“The way things work in the state of Arizona, even if we didn’t pay for these improvements, even if Arizona Water paid for them,” he said. “In fact, if Arizona Water paid for them, that cost would come back to the ratepayers ultimately because it would go to the [Arizona] Corporation Commission, who would rubber stamp the investments that the utility has made.”

Accountability

The council expressed frustration over the parking garage’s price tag and delayed opening, calling for a formal performance audit of the project once complete.

“Staff does a good job of financial audits, but the thing that we’ve seen lacking in the past is an actual performance audit function, and [the garage] opens itself up to be a great test ground of what we can actually see and learn,” said Councilman Pete Furman, who is also on the council’s audit subcommittee that was approved earlier this year.

“I don’t want to ever see a project like this again,” Councilwoman Kathy Kinsella said.

Addressing the ongoing delays and scrutiny, Dickey outlined steps the city is taking to improve its process on major capital projects moving forward.

“One would be going about the procurement process differently, and making sure that as we bring a contractor on board, some of these issues are built into their contract that require these issues are dealt with more proactively,” he said. “Of course, in hindsight, things are going to be more clear. Knowing what we know now about [AWC’s] system, it will be at the forefront of our minds to ensure that we check the details of their model moving forward at the front end of the project.

“Typically, when you submit for review to an entity, you would expect to get all the information up front. But like we explained to council on Tuesday, we don’t know the ins and outs of their private water system, but we know a lot more now.”

“Our confidence level is pretty high for [opening in January],” Dickey said.