Six years after opening, Northampton’s $16.5 million police station is marred by a costly dispute between the city and the companies responsible for designing and constructing the building on Center Street.
City officials say water leaks have cost city taxpayers nearly $740,000 to repair, prompting Northampton to file a lawsuit in Hampshire Superior Court last month against the general contractor, an architectural firm and an insurance company to recoup that money.
After initially working with the general contractor, Barr & Barr Inc. of Springfield, and the architectural firm, Caolo & Bieniek Associates of Chicopee, to resolve the problems, Northampton officials sought another solution. It got a second opinion and hired another architectural firm and contractor to review and address the leaks which led to the expensive repairs this spring. Liberty Mutual Co., which issued the bond for the project, is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit.
According to the May 18 lawsuit, issues with “persistent leaks and water infiltrations” began shortly after the Police Department occupied the building in July 2012, after a year of construction. The parking garage was completed in January 2013. The leaks occurred throughout the parking deck and garage and into the attached police station.
Water leaked into locker room and basement storage areas, as well as a sally port with a rolling garage door below the parking deck. The leaks occurred during heavy rain and affected these areas below the department’s flagpole and planters and where the parking deck meets the building, according to city officials.
The general contractor, Barr & Barr Inc., contends that it worked with the city for years to address the water leaks and even hired an independent consultant, Russo-Barr Associates of Woburn, to determine their cause and a remedy. Stephen L. Killian, a company vice president and director of operations for Barr & Barr’s New England office, told the Gazette this month that the company “tried everything in our power to satisfy them for the alleged design/construction defects in the building … It wasn’t like we walked away.”
The company points out that the report by Russo-Barr Associates found that the leaks were the result of the design of the garage and that “any construction deficiencies were minimal.” The company also stated that despite repeated requests over the past four years, the city “never pointed out a specific construction defect that it wanted (Barr & Barr) to repair.”
On the other hand, Curtis A. Edgin, president of the architectural firm Caolo & Bieniek Associates Inc., told the Gazette this month that there is “plenty of documentation available that confirms the parking deck was not constructed in full conformance with the contract documents.”
Alan Seewald, the Northampton city solicitor, said the city’s position is “quite clear” that there allegedly was negligence by both Barr & Barr and Caolo & Bieniek. “As I’ve said before, we intend to get the police station that the people of Northampton paid for and that’s what we’re doing,” he told the Gazette.
That is a reasonable position. We will leave it to the court to sort through the claims and counterclaims to determine who is responsible for the flaws that led to the leaks resulting in nearly three-quarters of a million dollars of taxpayers’ money being spent on repairs. Though the lawsuit will cost additional money, Northampton is correct in seeking a judicial remedy to hold someone accountable for the mistakes.
Northampton voters approved a $10 million, 20-year debt-exclusion override eight years ago to help pay for the new police station. In return, the city’s taxpayers deserve, as Mayor David Narkewicz put it this month, to “receive the police station facility that they paid for.”