Costs To Remodel Sacramento Community Center Theater Expected To Surge By Nearly 15 Percent

Editor's note: We briefly unpublished this story after we were alerted to an error. We have corrected the error and republished the story.

Updated 12:07 p.m.

The cost to remodel Sacramento’s Community Center Theater is expected to climb by nearly $13 million.

City Council is scheduled to approve the project’s new price tag, which now stands at $96.5 million, according to city staff — a jump of nearly 15 percent — at Tuesday’s meeting.

Engineers with the city of Sacramento say higher material costs and a shrinking labor pool are impacting the project’s budget.

City staff says the price of construction also has increased in part because of tariffs imposed by the Trump administration.

Ofelia Avalos, a senior engineer with the Sacramento city manager's office, says a building boom in the Sacramento area has made more difficult to secure contractors. Only 100 of nearly 300 companies that were asked submitted a bid on the project.

"It's an under-competitive bid environment, I think because of the major projects going on in the area," Avalos said.

She is asking City Council to approve the total construction cost for the project of $72.8 million. Last year, the estimated goal for construction was $64 million.

Avalos said new tariffs impact “raw materials like the steel and the aluminum, as well as the finished product downstream of the project like the cables and the fixtures, that kind of stuff.”

The city became aware of the increased costs after three rounds of bidding came in higher than expected.

Avalos says a multi-purpose room and various decorative items were removed from the project during the design process to reduce cost.

The Community Center Theater remodel began in January of this year, along with an estimated $120 million upgrade to the Convention Center. Both jobs are scheduled to be completed by fall of 2020.

The city’s hotel tax is paying for the project, and Avalos says there is more than enough to cover the increase.

The estimated total cost of the project — which includes construction, design and permits — was previously at $84 million.

Correction: This story originally reported that the Community Center Theater’s cost would increase by $1.2 million. It also incorrectly reported the construction and total costs for the project.