Two weeks after the Jefferson Parish Council opted to keep negotiating with Performing Arts Center contractor Joe Caldarera instead of placing him in default, officials Tuesday said they're still working on a deal
Two weeks after the Jefferson Parish Council opted to keep negotiating with Performing Arts Center contractor Joe Caldarera instead of placing him in default, officials Tuesday said they're still working on a deal. Caldarera, meanwhile, is expected to address the council again when it meets Wednesday.
Caldarera made an impassioned defense of his work in the embattled arts center project during the May 1 council meeting. That delayed a vote on a resolution that would have authorized Parish Attorney Deborah Foshee to put Caldarera in default. The delay gave Foshee time to complete negotiations with Caldarera's attorney, Joel Chaisson, who is St. Charles Parish's district attorney.
Foshee on Tuesday said the parish has been working to address "technical and engineering" issues, and that the parties are close to a deal. "We are really close, everybody is working together," Foshee said. But she acknowledged that she had said the same in recent weeks.
Caldarera didn't return a call seeing comment.
Parish officials and Caldarera sparred publicly late last month over who is to blame for the mess at the arts center, in Metairie's LaSalle Park. Construction of the building, which began in 2007, was supposed to take two years and cost $26 million. The building is now four years beyond schedule and the bill for taxpayers has risen to $44 million.
The cost will rise under the agreement being negotiated with Caldarera. The deal would pay him $9.75 million for work already completed and for the work needed to finish the project. Caldarera has said the deal would require him to finish the job within a year after he gets the payment, although he said it would take less time.
Many parish residents are angry about the eye-popping cost overruns and the delays at the arts center, caused in part by errors in the initial designs. In his presentation May 1, Caldarera showed pictures of some of the most glaring errors, including roofing gaps that would have led to flooding and an elevator that would have stopped 2 feet short of the top floor because it hit the roof.
Caldarera has said the parish has no grounds to put him on default. But Foshee has indicated that the parish can refute Caldarera's position and that he is seeking more money than what's he's entitled to receive.
The final agreement would depend on the parish's ability to get a technical change included in the state budget being discussed in the Legislature, so that the parish could receive $6.7 million approved last year for the arts center. Parish officials are counting on that money to pay Caldarera and finish the project.