![]() ![]() The consultants’ response to Pinner’s requests for information about various design issues - more than 2,700, well above the industry norm for a project of this size - were “often late and incomplete, further exacerbating the design issues,” Ballati found. She said the district’s team insisted that the state architect had to greenlight the splicing requested by Pinner but failed to seek approval even though the estimated costs and time to do so were not excessive. Ballati of JAMS, a private arbitration firm chosen by Pinner and the district to settle their differences, found multiple management failures by college consultants. “It’s so overbuilt, it’s like a bomb shelter,” said Robert Boyington, Pinner’s project executive, during a recent tour of the site.ĭeborah S. The firm’s lawsuit alleges that the consultants deliberately misled district trustees and officials about the issue of splicing, or joining, of vertical steel and that disagreements over it resulted in a 15-month delay and $2.5 million in additional compensation paid to consultants. The consultants insisted on the unusual design despite warnings from Pinner that it would delay the project for about 13 months and increase costs by $16 million, Kellam said. But the district’s project managers barred that plan and forced the firm to use pieces nearly three times higher and build the supporting structure for it. Pinner wanted to use shorter pieces of reinforcing steel no taller than 20 feet - which the arbitrator agreed was standard industry practice. Behind its concrete and wood-paneled walls is an enormous structure of interwoven reinforcing steel so heavy and tall that Pinner’s team had to build a massive wooden frame around it to hold it up, Newt Kellam, the firm’s chief administrative officer said in an interview. and its subcontractors, according to the arbitration report obtained by the Times.Īn illustration of the project’s multiple problems lies inside the main 430-seat theater, a soaring space that rises 80 feet high. ![]() The arbitrator ordered the district to pay $3.2 million in compensation to Pinner Construction Inc. After prolonged arguments over who is to blame, an independent arbitrator concluded in April that the Los Angeles Community College District was primarily at fault for the delays and violated state requirements for “good faith and fair dealing” in construction contracts. It has racked up $12 million in unanticipated costs. The $82-million center will enrich the education of Valley students - who are largely low-income and the first in their families to attend college - with marketable skills for the region’s creative industries and provide intimate performing spaces for the diverse artistic community, according to Jennifer Read, chair of the college’s theater department.īut since its 2016 groundbreaking, the project has been beset with troubles. The sleek new center at Los Angeles Valley College will have four indoor theaters, an outdoor amphitheater, classrooms, a newsroom, a radio station and faculty offices across 103,000 square feet of glass, steel, concrete and wood. ![]() It’s billed as one of the most expansive theater and media arts spaces among community colleges in California.
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