Jeb Bladine: Downtown project paying the high cost of delay
Somehow, a half-century ago, McMinnville crafted and launched an extensive downtown development plan in what today would be considered record time. City leaders approved the investment while declining to pay the high cost of delay.
An assessment on Third Street properties was combined with development funds from the city and Water & Light Department. The quick results included underground utilities and street repairs, new trees and sidewalks, mid-block kiosks, street lighting and other infrastructure improvements.
That was then.
A decade ago, with new access to urban renewal funding, McMinnville began talks about a 21st century version of downtown development. Serious planning efforts, launched in 2019, produced an estimated $11 million development plan in late 2022.
“This project,” said planning documents, “will fix deteriorated downtown infrastructure that has led to accessibility and safety issues and will define the character for the next generation,” adding that full engineering plans would be finished by the end of 2023.
That engineering project, staff told the McMinnville Urban Renewal Advisory Committee, “will be the next and penultimate phase for the corridor that encompasses 11 blocks from Adams Street to Johnson Street, between Second and Fourth streets.”
Three years later, after massive design changes for reasons still in question, the city has contracted with the Oregon Department of Transportation to manage the next design stage for a downtown project with construction estimated to cost $28 to $31 million.
The city has touted its receipt of $850,000 in federal funding to pay for the final design phase, but that means the project will be “federalized” under federal government standards that city staff warned could increase overall project costs by 15% to 20%.
I’m no math major, but last time I checked, 20% of $31 million was $6.2 million — not exactly a great return on that $850,000 federal grant. And that’s without even considering the short-sighted lack of city understanding about underground gasoline tank situations this project likely will reveal. That’s another story for another day.
(I realize these points are contrary to arguments made in today’s editorial. We’ll leave it up to readers to decide where they stand.)
Today’s story is about the cost of delay, and actually, McMinnville’s downtown project loses that competition to long-delayed replacement of a new I-5 bridge connecting Oregon and Washington, now-completed power plants in Georgia, and proposed new high-speed rail in California.
For years, estimates for that massive bridge project have been between $5 billion and $7.5 billion, with many reports settling on a mid-range $6 billion cost. This month, new cost estimates were announced as between $13.5 billion and $15.2 billion, “with a likely final price tag of $14.4 billion.”
In Georgia, the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant, estimated to cost $14 billion, finally penciled out between $30 billion and $35 billion when completed in 2023 and 2024.
In California, 2008 estimates set the cost of high-speed rail at about $33 billion. Today, due primarily to long delays, that project cost is said to be between $89 billion and $128 billion. No doubt, all of those also are “federalized” through use of federal grants — and more lessons in the high cost of delay.
Jeb Bladine can be reached at jbladine@newsregister.com or 503-687-1223.
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