Special Bd. of Aldermen — 05/20/2019 Page 12
but that battle was long ago lost to put it at a deferred location. The problem that | have and | am not going to
comment on this whole subject, is there is a Memorandum from Tim Cummings who said the construction
costs and | have a copy of it with me in case somebody says “that didn’t apply”. I’m holding it right here in my
hands. Construction costs for this job is $11.5 million dollars. He added $2 million dollars for the building; $1
million dollars for visual; $1 million dollars for architecture. So basically $11.5 million dollars to build this new
construction.
Well there’s finally the Steering Committee finally posted the minutes, it took a while, and on 6 March there is a
notation in the minutes and | read most of them, not all of them, but | caught that one. Mr. Cummings says that
the project is going to cost us between $18 million and $19 million dollars. That is the first time that has ever
been announced by Mr. Cummings. You may recall that | have mentioned many times here that the Fennessy
Construction Company working with Webb on the original design of the 550 seat theater estimated the project
to be $16.4 million dollars. The $16.4 million dollars included 33% in overhead costs and inflation costs and
contingency costs, and insurance cost and bonding cost. Well guess what? Last week the architects met with
the Steering Committee, Mr. Laws was there, and Ms. Melizzi-Golja was there, | don’t know who else, oh Mr.
Cummings was there, and Mr. Dowd was there.
Alderwoman Melizzi-Golja
And President Wilshire.
Mr. Teeboom And President Wilshire was there and guess what? The architect announced that the cost of
this project for the 750 seats which you need, I'll get to that in a minute, the project cost was announced to be
$18 million dollars, not including soft costs, which are typically D&A, bonds, insurance, profit and contingency.
You can ask Mr. Dowd who runs the School Construction Projects, typically, and I’ve been involved with the
School Construction, | think the contingency and all the rest, the hard costs, are typically 25% to 30%. Let’s
give it20%. But they also mentioned inflation costs because the project hasn’t started and what they call a
new cost called tariff costs because of Trump’s very expensive tariff costs. So if | add to that $18 million
dollars and that includes by the way $1 million dollars not for the theater but a $1 million to fix the roads and
the street and pull the transformer over and the utility poles and all the rest of the stuff outside the theater. If
you add 30% D&A which | think is the more reasonable number for something of this size, you got $23.5
million dollars. If our low ball D&A costs, and inflation costs, tariff costs, contingency costs, bond cost and
insurance cost, then the project is going to cost $21.5 million dollars. Construction, not counting the architects,
not counting the building and not counting audio-visual, so you have a disparity here, let’s take the $21.5
million dollars against the $11.5 million dollars of the original estimate of $10 million dollars deficiency. So now
you are trying to do is make up $10 million dollars with the combination, not the hocus pocus you are talking
about but the $10 million dollars made up with New Market Tax Credits and private contributions. So | do have
a question, how many private contributions have you collected so far, not counting New Market Tax Credits?
Is there a number?
President Wilshire
Director Cummings do you have a number?
Mr. Teeboom Nobody knows a number, my assumption is zip or close to it. | know, I’ve raised money for the
Memorial and it was four years of agony and it didn’t cost anywhere near this kind of money. So how are you
going to make up this deficiency of $10 million dollars, maybe as high if the D&A is 30% or for Fennessy 33% it
is going to be $12 million dollars. Now if somebody on this Board will begin to address what the City of
Nashua is going to do in case you can’t make up the deficiency of $10 or $12 million dollars. Start getting
realistic. I’m not against the Performing Arts Center. | don’t think you can start turning these architects into
magicians because they are trying to create a 750 seat theater, why? So there’s no endowment fund required
because the operator called Spectacle Management says that they will operate this place for 3 years and
guarantees it in writing without any subsidy, after 3 years maybe they do require a subsidy but right now
there’s no subsidy.
