McMinnville Rec Center Expected to Open January 2021

McMinnville City Administrator Nolan Ming said the Milner Recreation Center should be complete by mid-January, and open for use by the end of the January.

Ming said subcontractors and their employees getting COVID has been the biggest thing slowing down the project. Ming said the $150,000 contingency fund has been exhausted on this project, but said the recreation center should meet projected costs.

“Basically, we are on budget and a little bit over timed,” Ming said. “I would rather be under budget and a little bit late.”

Ming said roughly $100,000 spent from the contingency fund is attributed to the engineer and architect. Ming said this would be resolved between the city and the architect.

“We don’t feel like we bear the burden of paying those costs, as a lot of those were issues brought about by the architect or engineer missing things,” Ming said. “We’ll be working with the architect towards the end to work through those.”

On the City’s side of contingency fund use, there was a decision to add an additional racquetball court for about $64,000 dollars. Ming said there had been other small bumps in the road, adding to delays.

“Some unknowns, such as some bad soil that we ran upon towards the beginning of the project,” Ming said. “Some other small things like that, nothing real big it’s just a big project and those small things tend to add up.”

However, Ming said the lack of workers because of the pandemic is what keeps the project at a slow pace. Ming said this worker shortage has been persistent.

“Normally you would see several contractors from a given subcontractor or several workers from a given subcontractor out on the site during normal times,” Ming said. “Where as lately, we’re only seeing a few.”

Ming said the final part of the recreation center to install will be the bleachers, due to delays. Ming said this project was given a $9.2 million dollar budget.