CHARLESTON, W.Va.–Charleston City Manager David Molgaard announced at Charleston’s city finance meeting Monday night that BBL Carlton has been selected to lead the Charleston Civic Center renovation project.
The Charleston company was chosen as the best of three firms that submitted and presented extensive design proposals. After a five-person selection committee had been reviewing the proposals for weeks, BBL beat out Masaro Construction and PG Dick Construction to be awarded the top design team. Civic Center GM John Robertson, part of the selection committee, said that after tremendous deliberation, BBL’s plan stood out the most.
“There were a number of things that we looked at,” Robertson said. “We wanted creativity from each of the three groups and we saw that in the BBL project.”
Molgaard said that the target price range for the project is $59 million, and that at least 30 to 40 percent of the project will be upgrading outdated electrical and mechanical elements of the Civic Center. He described the criteria for judging the proposals.
“It’s a very attractive proposal. We actually scored this on a number of different criteria including the aesthetics and wow factor,” Molgaard said. “But also, what was the best value, and how they proposed to phase and schedule.”
He added that phasing and scheduling was a top priority because the Civic Center plans to remain open and conduct business as usual throughout the renovation process as much as it can, something that Robertson said would be a necessary challenge.
“We will stay open, we will serve our constituents,” Robertson insisted. “We hope that we can provide the least amount of inconvenience to them as possible. It will be a challenge but we’ve done it before, on every project we’ve done at the Civic Center we’ve remained open and we fully expect to be operational on this project.”
Molgaard was particularly impressed that the design BBL proposed was unique to West Virginia and its landscape.
“This particular design takes its inspiration from the history and the topography of West Virginia,” he said. “It acknowledges the rivers and the nodes of community, and it creates nodes within the design itself.”
He said the next step would be to sit down with the teams over the next month and a half, and that the other two teams’ ideas that were not awarded the contract would be given an honorarium, and some of their ideas would still be taken into consideration.
The project is expected to be completed by the fall of 2017.