UNITY — The county was informed Tuesday via email that it has been awarded $25.2 million for the proposed renovation of the county nursing home from the Governor’s Office for Emergency Relief and Recovery, County Manager Derek Ferland said.
The approval, which still needs to go to the governor and Executive Council either later this month or in November, completes the funding package for the project that is estimated to cost between $57 million and $63 million. The GOFERR money will come from a $50 million fund set up earlier this year for capital improvements to county nursing homes. The money comes in the form of a 0%-interest loan, and the county is reimbursed from the fund as expenses are incurred for the project, Ferland said.
In August, the county delegation of state representatives unanimously approved a $20 million bond for the project with a provision that county commissioners could bond an additional $6 million if the project’s total cost warrants it. The rest of the funding will come from $2 million the county has received in federal funds, $7 million from the county’s share of the American Rescue Plan Act and up to $5 million from the county’s capital reserve fund.
Ferland said Wednesday they are currently waiting for the “guaranteed maximum price” from the general contractor. That number will dictate how the county will proceed, including how much work, such as asbestos removal from the Sanders building, can be done over the winter before major construction begins in the spring.
“We are expecting that pretty soon,” Ferland said of the guaranteed maximum price.
County officials have been debating renovations to the nursing home for a couple of years and when first proposed, the price tag was around $35 million, which quickly escalated to $44 million in July 2020. That price was projected to increase another 14% with supply chain shortages, increased demand for construction services and labor shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic. An effort to study the proposal by a working group of the county delegation to see if the total cost could be reduced concluded that the scope of the work could not be changed and a redesign would cost more. By early this year, the price estimate rose to $57 million.
The nursing home project includes complete renovations of the Stearns building with an 82,000-square-foot addition, improvements to the MacConnell building and demolition to the Sanders building.
Patrick O’Grady can be reached at pogclmt@gmail.com.
