Early renderings of what the new Palm Desert library could look like.
The City Council voted 4-0 Thursday to terminate a construction agreement with Tilden Coil Construction for the new city library after the contractor's cost estimate came in far higher than the city expected.
“I urge rapidly doing this. Let’s not waste time,” said Councilmember Jan Harnick, who proposed the motion. The delay is expected to push back the expected opening to late 2028.
The city will immediately open a new proposal period, this time requiring contractors to agree upfront to the city's cost estimates. Applicants would also be allowed to subcontract out all work on the project — a change that could attract more bidders.
“We feel pretty confident that this is something that we can still meet,” said Senior Project Manager Ryan Lamb of the initial $30 million cost estimate for the library. That number is expected to be exceeded according to city documents accompanying his presentation however.
“I’m not so sure I’ve got the appetite to spend much more than $30 million on a building,” said Mayor Evan Trubee. “That was never the idea — to have a gold-plated edifice in our city.”
All councilmembers present expressed concern that the project initially designed would have to be altered to fit within the original cost estimate.
“The more we delay the process, whether we're renovating another building or whether we're building a new one, the price is going to go up,” due to rising construction costs, said Harnick.
“I would support engineering towards that $30 million goal, not necessarily integrity to the design,” said Mayor Pro Tem Joe Pradetto.
Pradetto said he voted yes partly because he believed the Parkway building needed to be demolished in any case.
“We’re not going to repurpose it, and the longer it sits there, the more of a liability it becomes,” he said.
Tilden Coil will still receive $1 million to demolish the existing building and for already rendered preconstruction services.
Earlier this week, the Library Advisory Committee reviewed initial construction cost estimates for the project at 73710 Fred Waring Dr., coming in roughly double the $25 million the city initially allowed for in November.
An independent review with the original architect and other city contractors found the initial cost expectation for the project to be reasonable.
At that meeting,a city official told the committee the gap was the result of differences in how Tilden Coil and the project's architect, Richärd Kennedy Architects, drafted key design elements. For instance, differing approaches to the construction of a hade structure resulted inａ$1.5 to $7 million cost variance for that one item.
“One firm could look at that as a custom built, something that takes a great deal of steel, lot of labor, and a custom thing that needs to be built on site, whereas another firm could look at that as something that could be fabricated off site and then brought in,” explained Jess Culpepper, director of capital projects for the city.
Palm Desert withdrew from the Riverside County Library System in July 2024 to transition to a city-operated library. As it explored options for a long term library site, it entered a five-year lease for a temporary library at the College of the Desert campus. That lease will end in July 2029, after which the college will repurpose the building, said Lamb.
“We do not have the option of staying after five years,” he warned.