A new Midtown OKC HQ for Palomar faces budget issues. Here's how MAPS 4 will tackle it.

Yahoo

16-02-2025

Oklahoma City officials recently approved plans meant to cover rising construction costs for Palomar's upcoming MAPS 4-budgeted Family Justice Center and start the bidding process for the project.
As final plans for the new Family Justice Center were being presented to the city council, designers showed that project estimates of the upcoming MAPS 4 facility were at serious risk of going overbudget. But the Allford Hall Monaghan Morris architectural team is proposing that certain design elements can be bid as alternates separately from the base bid estimate of just under $28 million.
The new center at 1135 N Hudson Ave. will act as a larger and permanent headquarters for Palomar, a nonprofit devoted to coordinating various agencies and services to help victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, elder abuse, human trafficking and childhood trauma. Construction would be scheduled for completion in 2027.
The first floor's 31,650 square feet would contain client spaces, medical services, a community hall and a cafe. The 21,800-square-foot second floor would hold office space for Palomar staff and its various partners, law enforcement, legal aid and homeless services.
But budgetary constraints would also mean including the 19,434-square-foot third floor and the first-floor cafe space as "white boxes," with exposed concrete floors, shaft walls and temporary lighting. Certain security items, equipment and furniture would also be part of the design alternates, along with potential "fit outs" of the third floor and cafe, for a combined cost of $5.4 million.
AHMM Associate Director Daniel Hayes said the spaces for the third floor and the cafe would still be built, but that they wouldn't be capable of being used on Day 1 as originally intended.
'The hope is that, either the project comes back below budget and we can include some of these items in the base bid,' Hayes said. 'Or, we have a contingency currently that sits around $2.3 million, and that's obviously for unforeseen problems during the construction process. If that isn't used — and we hope it's not — potentially we could include some of these items into the base bid.'
More: See what OKC's new family justice center for domestic violence survivors could look like
MAPS Program Manager David Todd said that the Family Justice Center budget is losing significant money every month to inflation.
'In this time of unprecedented inflation and uncertainty with costs, we've done a lot of things to try and keep the project within budget, but we still struggle for that,' Todd said. He proposed what he described as 'creative ways' to get the project on the street.
In 2022, the city council revised the $1 billion MAPS 4 Implementation Plan, increasing revenue estimates by $100 million overall for the program's projects. Palomar decided to provide its portion of additional funding (an estimated $4 million) to the MAPS 4 Investment Trust to help with operations.
But in order to meet project estimates for the new Family Justice Center, $2 million from Palomar's portion of the investment fund would be pledged toward the construction budget. In addition, so that Palomar could continue earning interest on their investment to the trust fund, $2 million from the overall MAPS 4 budget would be used until the Family Justice Center completes construction.
Once the build is finished, then the $2 million will be pulled out of the investment fund and used toward the project. About that same time, MAPS staff expect to have conversations about what to do with excess collections from the program's sales tax, which Todd said could equate to a projected $32 million.
'This is no guarantee, but at that point, I would propose that we submit an application or a request to city council to reimburse that $2 million out of excess collections,' Todd said. 'The timing is that it works really well.'
Related: Meet the woman behind OKC's innovative approach to helping victims of domestic violence
The plan was recommended by the MAPS 4 Community Subcommittee and the Citizens Advisory Board, and ultimately approved by the Oklahoma City Council — but not without various members of each body voicing some reluctance.
Chelsea Banks, the MAPS 4 advisory board member from Ward 2, expressed concern that the proposed 'white boxes' would only shift the burden of finishing out those spaces to Palomar. Her concerns led her to abstain from recommending approval of the final plan's specifications.
'As it stands, it seems pretty disappointing to me that we have to restrict ourselves from all of these community spaces because of the budget, including the cafe,' Banks said. 'From a pedestrian point of view who is in Midtown regularly and knows how Palomar impacts the community, it seems like a big deal.'
Ward 2 Councilperson James Cooper also said the current plan made him "very nervous" due to how it could affect the "healing" intentionality of the project's holistic design. He asked if the city could come back and use more funding from potential excess collections to finish the third floor and the cafe "white box" later down the line.
'I'm glad that we're, I guess, preserving the space for (the cafe) — I just would like to see it as originally intended to be done,' Cooper said. 'This is a very important project to me, and I just worry about having just this vacant space that people are walking by and not activated, especially people who are visiting loved ones or just working in this building, to have this moment to go down and enjoy a cup of coffee with their neighbors.'
City Manager Craig Freeman said Cooper's suggestion would have to be evaluated when the time comes. As the MAPS 4 sales tax winds down in 2028, city staff would not only have to determine where funds from excess collections should go, but also determine how to value-engineer other projects that might be running overbudget.
"That's why I don't want to make these decisions one-off on this case with potential excess funds," Freeman said. "When we get to that point, there'll be several projects, and that way we're not taking any one of them individually in a vacuum. The hope would be that we would have funding that we could then put back to projects. This (Family Justice Center) would be built out in a way that everything would be ready to go, if there weren't other solutions that we identified prior to that time where that could be built out."
Ward 7 MAPS adviser Monique Bruner, otherwise supportive of the Family Justice Center, said that the proposed funding plan could set a difficult precedent.
'I see, on other projects that would be overbudget as well, how is it going to work?' Bruner asked. 'If we set this this way, it's possible that other projects would want the same type of plan as well, and I think that starts us down a slippery slope that I'm very uncomfortable with.'
Shay Morris, vice chair of the MAPS advisory board and chair of its community subcommittee, acknowledged that 'it was not an easy vote to advance' the final Family Justice Center plans out of committee. But she felt that it was the right decision in the long term.
'We wished we could have a nice, easy resolution right there in the subcommittee,' Morris said. 'But it just felt like there was way more risk in waiting, due to the uncertainty of inflation and maybe even tariffs. Personally I don't think construction materials are going to get any cheaper.'
Ward 4 Councilman Todd Stone shared similar thoughts, thanking the MAPS office staff for figuring out a way to keep the project moving.
'I've heard of other projects that supposedly have tripled in value or cost, and ours haven't tripled, but they are tight,' Stone said. 'And this is one project that I personally just feel like is very important that we get it done, and get it done in the correct way.'
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Final Family Justice Center plans approved despite budget constraints