Juvenile Hall Builder Fined for Delays

Expansion of a Sylmar juvenile hall into the nation’s largest youth detention facility is more than two years behind schedule, delayed by a combination of construction troubles, miscommunications and the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

In response, frustrated Los Angeles County officials have taken the unusual step of fining the project contractor $5,000 a day until the 160-room expansion is completed. The construction firm, Irvine-based Swinerton & Walberg, says county planners are partly to blame for delays and will not comment on whether the company plans to appeal the fines.

The $26.2-million project was supposed to be done by December 1994. But the opening date has been changed half a dozen times, and is now set for the end of June.

The delays come as the county struggles to cope with a juvenile justice system so severely overcrowded that many youths sleep on the floor. Even when the Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall is completed, more beds will be needed.

Told of the delays, Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich said this week that he will call leaders of the county Probation Department and the Department of Public Works before the Board of Supervisors to explain.

“We know that one year’s delay was caused by the earthquake,” said Antonovich. “We want to know about the other reasons.”

The new wing at Nidorf Juvenile Hall was approved by the board in 1990 in response to a surge in juvenile crime. For years, Probation Department officials responsible for juvenile halls have complained about having to house two youngsters in cells built for one.

In the past four years, the county’s juvenile hall population has grown 21% to about 2,000 youths.

The county’s three juvenile halls are also responsible for handling increasingly violent youths, with a higher proportion of murderers, rapists, robbers and kidnappers than the County Jail system.

The growth in youth offenders has been a challenge for county efforts to keep pace.

“If you are starting [to build] a juvenile prison today, it will be overcrowded by the time it’s finished,” said Sidney Ware, a Probation Department director who is monitoring the Sylmar project. “We don’t run the Sheraton, so we can’t say there’s no vacancy when the police come around.”

Acting Chief Probation Officer Walt Kelly agreed that the expansion will not solve the system’s overcrowding. But he said the additional space will allow the most dangerous offenders to be kept together.

The county in January 1994 awarded the construction contract to Swinerton & Walberg, one of the nation’s largest general contractors with experience building jails. But days later, the Northridge earthquake hit, forcing the evacuation of the facility’s 700 minors, including many who had been sleeping on mattresses on the floors.

The quake led to the toughening of city and state seismic building standards, prompting higher costs and delays of more than a year.

“Immediately after the earthquake, everybody kind of froze,” said Gary Tse, a Department of Public Works official managing the project.

County officials allege that the firm failed to keep enough workers on the job and did not keep them working a full day. They began imposing contractor fines May 1, contending that Swinerton had more than enough time to finish despite the quake-imposed setback.

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Swinerton officials deny the contention that they did not put enough workers on the project. They say work has been hampered by changes made by the county to its original plans.

Additionally, Swinerton officials contend that the county provided an inaccurate map of the area and did not respond to their questions in a timely manner.

Michael Hughes, Swinerton’s senior project manager, said the county’s faulty map forced the contractor to reposition a parking garage away from a slope that would have caused flooding in the building.

Even though no concrete had been poured, the change was expensive and time-consuming, forcing changes in nearby storm drain and sewer systems. The extra cost for moving the garage about five feet was $500,000, according to county documents.

“We build based on the county drawings,” Hughes said. “We have to assume that the county information is accurate.”

The dispute over the expansion may wind up in court after the project is finished--exactly what county officials had hoped to avoid when they awarded the contract to Swinerton.

The agreement, a so-called design/build contract, allowed the county to reduce its liability by holding the contractor responsible for subcontractors and cost overruns.

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The county was not required to accept the lowest bid because of a state exemption for the construction of juvenile detention facilities.

So far, the project has cost about $3 million more than expected. Two-thirds of the $26.2-million cost will be paid by Proposition 86, a state initiative to expand funding for the juvenile justice system.

Last year, the county Board of Supervisors approved the sale of $8.7 million in bonds to pay its share of the expansion. About $2 million of the cost overruns will be paid by expanding the bond debt. About $1 million will be saved because officials canceled a proposed school expansion.

Repayment of the bonds will come from the Probation Department’s budget at a cost of $1 million a year.

Neither the county nor the contractor have said whether they plan to file lawsuits to recover costs.