The city of Palo Alto, Calif., thought it was getting a bargain on a new library when it authorized a construction contract whose low bid came in $8 million below the estimated cost of $32 million. Now the savings are disappearing into $1.7 million in change orders, a year of delay and possible litigation at the project's end.
The Mitchell Park Library and Community Center project is surely not the first with disagreements among the project team members. But the dispute is unusual for the project's degree of transparency.