AIRPORT: TERMINAL MISSES DEADLINE

The contractor renovating the terminal building at Cape Girardeau Municipal Airport apparently won't make the completion deadline.

The deadline, which city officials said either is Monday or was on Saturday, is the deadline cited by the project's architect.

Regardless, the terminal building renovation has been plagued by holdups initially by a Federal Aviation Administration bureaucratic snafu and now by construction delays.

It was in December 1990 that the city's Airport Advisory Board first recommended the terminal building be renovated, following more than a year of deliberations.

Now, two years and four months later, the project finally is near completion.

The architect of the renovation plan, Tom Holshouser of Cape Girardeau, said construction was delayed this spring when the contractor, R.A. Schemel and Associates of Perryville, was unable to obtain ceramic floor tile.

"The supplier didn't provide the materials, and we lost 30 days waiting for the extra ceramic tile," Holshouser said. "Another problem was with some subcontractors that worked for Schemel. There were a lot of times when they didn't show up when they were supposed to. When that happens, you just have a dominoes effect, which pushes everybody back."

Holshouser guessed Schemel has at least four more weeks of work to complete all but detailed finishing work. The construction contract allows the city to assess liquidated damages of $450 per day for each day past the deadline that the project isn't finished.

Leslie said the contractor already was granted a 37-day extension from the original completion deadline in March.

"There's still substantial work to be done on the sheet-rock finishing, floor tiles and some other items that will take some time to complete," Leslie said.

He said the city has had no requests from the contractor for another extension. Richard Schemel couldn't be reached to comment.

Leslie lamented the drawn-out construction process.

"We let the asbestos abatement contract in February of 1992, and that went on for several months," he said. "The building has been virtually under some phase of construction since February 1992."

How can a renovation project first approved more than two years ago remain unfinished?

Part of the problem is that the city is reliant upon federal funds for the renovation, which required the Federal Aviation Administration to closely regulate building plans.

Once the city and Holshouser completed bid specifications in October 1991, those specs were sent to the FAA for review. That review yielded changes and delayed bidding the project until February.

"With these types of projects, you design a building for your needs, and then, when it goes to the FAA, you essentially redesign the whole building," said Leslie.

"That negotiation took quite some time to complete. It got down to as much detail as the square footage of a closet."

Once those items were resolved, the bid specs were drawn and a detailed plan completed. Again, those documents were sent back to the FAA for review.

"Each one of these steps could be a couple of months' timeframe," Leslie said. "The FAA has to approve almost every step of it."

Once the project finally went out for bids, it wasn't long before the city was ready to award a construction contract to the lowest bidder Sides Construction Co.

But the FAA stepped in again. Contractors awarded any federally-funded airport project must meet qualifications for the government's Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program. Through the program, bidders on the city's airport projects must make efforts to subcontract at least 10.7 percent of the dollar value of the contract to small businesses owned and controlled by "socially and economically disadvantaged individuals," or DBEs.

Guidelines of the program indicate that those individuals "presumed" to be socially and economically disadvantaged include "women, black Americans, Hispanic Americans, native Americans, Asian-Pacific Americans, and Asian-Indian Americans."

Through an extremely complex set of regulations that require a wide array of documentation, the FAA accepts or rejects the bidder.

Thus in April 1992, the FAA rejected Sides' bid and threatened to do the same for the project's second low bidder, Schemel.

Eventually Schemel was awarded the contract, but was unable to start renovation work until asbestos was removed from the building, which took until June.

Finally on June 23, Schemel started work on the project. He was given 270 days to complete the work, but early this spring a change order in the contract was approved, prompting a 37-day extension of the contract.

Now it appears it will be another month before the renovation is finished, although Leslie said it will be "substantially completed" sooner.

That would enable tenants at the airport Hertz and National car rentals and the airport gift shop to move into the building. They've operated out of mobile office buildings outside the facility since February 1992.

"Our key focus has been wanting to get those areas done for those people in mobile offices, and that should be fairly soon," Leslie said.

He said that despite the setbacks, the end product will be a good one.

"The end product we're seeing, we're satisfied with," he said. "It's the timeframe we're not satisfied with."

"Renovations of this size are always a coordination problem," said Holshouser. "But I think all the contractors knew this going in.

"When we came up with a cost projection for the project, we plugged the cost of those inconveniences in there."

Leslie and Holshouser said they hope patrons of the airport will forget the delays once the final product is realized. Leslie said the new building will be attractive and versatile, with expansion potential in the event additional airline service is secured for the airport.

"I think everybody's going to be proud of it," said Holshouser. "A lot of business flyers in private planes, that's their front door to the city.

"I think we're going to give them a view of the city that's state-of-the-art."

Holshouser said he's looking forward to the day when he'll be able to use the new terminal building himself.

"I'm kind of anxious to have dinner down there and sit and watch the planes come in," he said. "I think it's an asset there that's really been neglected in the past."