New library would open in August 2013, not June 2013, if library board pushes back construction

CEDAR RAPIDS - The city's library board will decide next week if it will delay the start of construction of the city's new $49-million library from Dec. 5, 2011, to Feb. 1, 2012.

The later start date will push back the anticipated opening of the new library from June 17, 2013, to Aug. 15, 2013, the project's construction manager, Ryan Companies US Inc., reported to the board in a memorandum this week.

Delaying the start of construction two months would mean that bidding for work on the project would occur in late November, an end-of-the-year time in which “traditional bidding patterns” have shown contractors planning for the new year can be willing to build lower profit margins into the bids, Ryan's Clayton Cubbage says in his memo to the board.

Cubbage says that delaying the start of construction also would allow “sensitive” construction activities to start and finish in the most “cost-effective” time of year. Starting construction in February 2012 rather than December 2011, for instance, could save about $150,000 because certain work would not take place in “winter conditions,” Cubbage says.

At the same time, he notes that delays in construction could put cost pressure on a project as material costs for the project “continue to escalate, as forecast.”

The library board meets at 4 p.m. Tuesday at the temporary home of the library at Westdale Mall. The board will meet there in the library's Schulz Room.