Sunday, May 23, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

REGIONAL JUSTICE CENTER: County, contractor trade barbs

Overdue downtown courthouse destined for years of legal battles

Randy Walker, who is supervising construction of the Regional Justice Center for Clark County, points to a tic-tac-toe game carved into a door while it was stacked in a storage room. Contractors installed the door in the building anyway. The troubled project could open by early next year, five years after construction began. Photo by Gary Thompson. Click image for enlargement. Clusters of windows on 17 floors cannot keep rainwater from leaking into the Regional Justice Center. AF Construction is fixing the problem, one of many that have delayed the project. Photo by Gary Thompson. AF Construction, the builder of the troubled $185 million Regional Justice Center project, had to repour concrete in the lobby because the floor was so uneven. Photo by Gary Thompson.

Five years ago, Clark County's plans for the Regional Justice Center captured architectural accolades. The taxpayer-funded building was envisioned as a downtown centerpiece that would spur redevelopment efforts.

Instead, the 18-story courthouse has emerged as a problem-plagued, overdue project destined for years of legal battles over who is to blame.

The $185 million Regional Justice Center on Casino Center Boulevard was scheduled to open more than two years ago to provide a single destination for legal matters, handling District, Justice, Las Vegas Municipal and state Supreme Court cases.

Judges, attorneys, defendants and plaintiffs should be milling in the lavish corridors by now. Instead, the only workers logging hours at the building are construction crews and subcontractors.

AF Construction, which was awarded the contract to build the center in 1999, and Clark County administrators are at odds over why work crews and heavy equipment still occupy the building.

"It's a multitude of things, from design changes to administration to construction," said Shawn Goecke, a project manager for AF Construction. "It touches on every component of construction."

County administrators have a narrower definition of the problem: AF Construction.

"You have a contractor who wasn't capable of handling this complicated of a job," said county Aviation Director Randy Walker, who in February 2002 was assigned to oversee construction of the justice center. "Much of the substandard work, they're going to walk away from and say, `Deal with it.' "

Construction crews broke ground on the Regional Justice Center in January 2000. Walker said once a temporary occupancy certificate is issued, he estimates it will take six months to install furniture.

Walker predicted the building would open late this year or in early 2005. If his estimate proves true, the time between groundbreaking and opening would exceed that of the 1,149-foot Stratosphere tower, a far more complicated and expensive construction project that was delayed by a major fire.

AF Construction and Clark County are headed to arbitration over delays and payments, and representatives of each side are confident they will prevail.

Clark County has not paid AF Construction in more than a year. The company has been penalized $12,000 a day for 10 months. Fireman's Fund Insurance Company, AF Construction's bonding firm, stepped in a year ago to pay for construction.

Employees for AF Construction, which is owned by Paul Faulkner, claim the county is being unfair by blaming their company and holding back payments.

"Sometimes I think what they're trying to do is put Paul of out business," said Randy Provdiwy, a superintendent with AF Construction.

During a recent tour, Walker pointed out the county's primary concerns with the structure:

• Uneven floors that in 30 areas slope more than an inch were first brought to AF Construction's attention in August 2002 but were carpeted anyway.

• Vandals carved tic-tac-toe matches into veneer doors while they were stacked in a storage room. The doors were installed nonetheless, Walker said.

• Window frames installed in courtroom doors were supposed to match the reddish-brown door frames, but instead are a gray putty color.

• Some of the footings for steel columns in the lobby are above ground, but others are flush with the floor. Concrete in the lobby had to be repoured because the first result was so uneven it "looked like a roller coaster," Walker said.

And then there is the artist Walker frustratingly refers to as "Joe Van Gogh," who has the tedious task of matching paints with the color of the justice center tile imported from Verona, Italy.

Pushing a paint pallet on rollers through the courthouse, the worker mixes paint with epoxy and dabs the concoction on scratches etched into the floor by construction equipment.

The touch-ups are nothing courthouse visitors will notice, but Walker said the epoxy mixture was used to repair scratches at McCarran International Airport's D terminal. The result was a maintenance headache.

"I say every week, `I don't know why you're doing that. We're not going to approve it,' " Walker said, eyeing the painter and his cart of colors. "It's awful, and awful has become a relative term."

The majority of the county's problems with the building are aesthetic. But some problems still threaten AF Construction's chances of securing a temporary occupancy certificate by its stated goal of June 18. The city of Las Vegas must issue the certificate before justice center employees can move in.

Cable trays were designed to run above hallways so new wires could be added as needed by popping out ceiling tiles. Instead, the trays, which are at 35 percent capacity, are inaccessible above piping and behind walls.

Clusters of windows on 17 floors cannot keep rainwater from leaking into the building.

Most of the problems Walker pointed to were mistakes in architectural drawings that were approved by the county, Goecke said. The window frames, for example, are the same color called for in the plans.

"That's the color they picked," Goecke said. "If you pick that color and then decide it was the wrong color, that's not the contractor's responsibility."

Goecke acknowledged AF Construction has made mistakes, but the company promptly fixed each deficiency. It plans to repair sloped floors and rain-proof the windows by mid-June.

"If (Walker) wants to go around and point out where we did something wrong, he can do that," Goecke said. "But we also fixed it. You can say this and that, but it's not an issue anymore."

Walker said such mistakes continue to cripple the project.

The county is prepared to take over the building in June should AF Construction crews deem their work finished. Walker said withholding payments to the Las Vegas construction company, combined with assessed penalties, has given the county plenty of money to fix problems.

Mistakes are noted in noncompliance certificates issued to the contractor, and payment is withheld until they are corrected. Since the beginning of construction, about 660 of those certificates have been issued.

About 120 noncompliance certificates remain outstanding. Those will require nearly $8 million worth of work to correct the deficiencies, the majority of which would not prevent court officials from moving into the building.

"Does the building work? Yes," Walker said. "But what would you feel like if this was your custom-built home? It's about functionality and aesthetics. We paid for both."

Goecke said the county could have started moving furniture into the building more than six weeks ago, reducing Walker's estimated six-month move-in period. Doing so would have allowed AF Construction to begin hooking up wiring in each office.

"Every week I ask them to move in their furniture," he said. "You can occupy a building and continue to fix things. You don't just open the doors and the contractor leaves and you never hear from them again."

The justice center was part of a $120 million bond approved by voters in September 1996. The bond issue, which represented the cost of the justice center at $80 million, was supported by two of every three voters. Changes and additions to the justice center plan were made after the vote, boosting the cost.

When bids were accepted for the job in 1999, ICI/J.A. Jones was the lowest bidder. But when county officials found flaws in the company's application, the next-lowest bidder, AF Construction, was chosen.

AF Construction's $123.5 million bid was $1.5 million less than the offer submitted by Perini Building Co., which built McCarran International Airport's D Gates. At the time, state law required local governments to award contracts to the lowest bidder.

That law has since changed.

Armed with documents detailing years of delays and what Walker terms "substandard work," county lobbyists persuaded the state Legislature to amend the law to allow government bodies to look at bidding companies' qualifications.

"That was the poster child," Clark County Manager Thom Reilly said, referring to the justice center. "With pre-qualification, you can take people off the list. AF wouldn't have been qualified, and we wouldn't have entertained a bid from them."

"That's the real problem," Walker said. "The lowest bidder is not always the best."

According to AF Construction's bid, the company had completed several multimillion-dollar projects. The company, which has done business in Las Vegas for about 25 years, renovated Sam Boyd Stadium in 1999. It completed the Las Vegas Convention Center expansion that same year. It also built Buffalo Bill's resort in Primm.

AF Construction secured the contracts for the Regional Justice Center and the neighboring Clark County Detention Center expansion with low bids. The detention center expansion opened more than a year ago and will be the focus of arbitration hearings set to begin next year.

In a metropolis where multimillion-dollar, multifloor, unique structures are commonplace, county officials acknowledge that building a courthouse shouldn't have been such a struggle.

Bellagio was completed in less than three years, as was the eight-story Lloyd George U.S. Courthouse.

Reilly, who was not county manager when the Regional Justice Center was approved, acknowledged the county lacked a strong oversight team. The county failed to communicate or coordinate with the contractor as problems snowballed and costs soared. Reilly finally assigned Walker, who has experience with massive projects, to the justice center.

"There was a combination of a poor contractor with decisions early on dealing with county oversight, or lack thereof," Reilly said. "You can't have a bad contractor and little oversight. That's a recipe for disaster."

AF Construction representatives say the building was 90 percent complete when Walker began questioning work that had been finished months before, or sometimes more than a year earlier.

Walker started giving county administrators frequent updates on the project and publicly criticized AF Construction, which in turn filed a lawsuit that includes allegations of defamation.

Goecke questioned why the county believes AF Construction will walk out on the project when it already has endured two years of public criticism he says is undeserved.

"We had a good reputation in town until we got involved with the county," Goecke said. "It's unconscionable for people to think this building has been the contractor's problem."

The delays have given the city of Las Vegas time to rethink its participation in the project.

About 20 percent of the center, 93,000 square feet, is reserved for Las Vegas Municipal Court. The city has made $9 million in debt payments on its $32 million share of the construction costs.

City Manager Doug Selby said he isn't worried about Las Vegas' share of the costs. But a jump in overhead once the city's courts move is a concern.

With the higher level of security at the building and the cost of the building's maintenance staff, the city's costs will jump from about $500,000 a year to $1.5 million.

"Our maintenance costs would be triple what they are for just a little less than twice as much space," Selby said. "It would be more expensive than an equivalent city building. Even building our own would be cheaper."

City officials believe the county could easily remodel and fill the space set aside for Municipal Court. The Las Vegas City Council on Wednesday approved negotiating with the county to determine whether the city can pull out of the building and recoup its investment.

"We don't have a plan to pull out. We have an interest in having a discussion with the county about our options," Selby said. "At the end of the day we may end up in the building."

Review-Journal writer Michael Squires contributed to this report.