Design team picked for Santa Rosa’s Old Courthouse Square reunification project

Local civil engineering firm Carlile-Macy, whose founder has been lobbying city officials for more than a year to fast-track the redesign and reunification of Old Courthouse Square, was awarded a key design contract to do just that Monday.

The Santa Rosa-based firm was picked by City Manager Sean McGlynn after a confidential selection process that saw three design teams vying to redesign the high-profile and long-delayed project.

Carlile-Macy was the nearly unanimous pick of a seven member selection panel that met behind closed doors last week to review the three proposals, which were kept secret except for the names of the firms competing for the work.

The other two teams were SWA Group of Sausalito, which won the 2007 design competition to reunify the square, and Redwood City-based BKF Engineers, which also has team members involved in past reunification efforts.

“The primary feedback from the Committee was that the Carlile-Macy’s team was the most balanced and clearly demonstrated both their past successes and ability to deliver all components of the Courthouse Square Reunification project,” Transportation & Public Works director Jason Nutt said in a statement.

The recommendation was made last week to McGlynn, who directed staff to trying to negotiate a contract with Carlile-Macy for the work. The goal was to have terms ironed out by Dec. 1.

The City Council dramatically boosted McGlynn’s spending authority to kickstart the project, increasing his spending limit from $100,000 to $500,000.

The work will include holding at least two public meetings to gather input from residents, completing conceptual drawings for approval by the City Council early next year, and completing construction drawings needed get the project underway by June 1. The city’s goal is to have construction completed by the beginning of the 2016 holiday shopping season.

Nutt has called that timeline “aggressive” and “very, very tight.”

Retired Carlile-Macy founder and former planning commissioner Dick Carlile has been working closely with a group of downtown property owners and business leaders to convince the city to scrap the $17 million SWA plan in favor of something cheaper, simpler and with more parking.

The group, called Coalition to Restore Courthouse Square, met multiple times with city staff and council members in an effort to get the project scaled back, redesigned and rolling quickly.

Carlile worked with members of his former firm on a draft plan for the square that showed side streets Hinton and Exchange - complete with wide sidewalks, two travel lanes, and two rows of diagonal parking - taking up substantially more space than those in the SWA plan.

The council expressed strong support for the lower price tag, additional parking and “simple, open, flexible and sustainable” design. It also capped the new design at $10 million.

The new council’s embrace of the simpler plan sparked some push-back from former Mayor Scott Bartley and architect Don Tomasi, who argued that starting from scratch made little sense and wider streets would sacrifice park space for parking spaces.

But Carlile and others have argued that the additional parking will help activate the reunited square, help fill vacant commercial buildings, and can be blocked off to cars whenever special events need the additional space.

The review panel had seven voting members: Gary Wysocky, Santa Rosa City councilman; Jonathan Coe, president of the Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce; Ralf Konietzko, an architect representing the American Institute for Architecture; Hugh Futrell, a downtown developer and representative of Coalition to Restore Courthouse Square; Nanette Smejkal, director of Recreation & Parks Department; Danielle O’Leary, the city’s Economic Development manager; and Nutt, the director of Transportation & Public Works. Two additional senior public works staff, Coleen Ferguson and Steve Dittmer, also participated but did not vote.

After a robust discussion, six of the seven members voted for Carlile-Macy, Nutt said.

Futrell, the developer of the Museum on the Square building on the southwest corner of the square, said the design teams were very competitive with one another.

“I scored the three teams extremely close together, and I think the group as whole had a similar perspective,” Futrell said. “It was a pretty exhaustive interview.”

He said he voted for Carlile-Macy but that he never had the sense the firm had the inside track with the selection committee and he went into it with no obligations.

“The Coalition’s charge to me was to help the city select the best choice without any commit of any kind whatsoever to Carlile-Macy,” Futrell said.

Nutt said he would have preferred to have a few more applicant but felt all three teams made excellent presentations.

“I honestly believe that it was a very fair, open interview process and really we should be proud of the three teams that showed up because it made it very difficult to make a decision,” Nutt said.

Carlile, who said he no longer has any financial connection to his former firm, said he was pleased with the selection and looked forward to seeing the project progress. He said he felt all teams an equal chance to win the contract.

“It was a competition and from all I know it was a fair competition,” Carlile said. “I stayed away from all of that.”

Information about the project and the opportunity to provide feedback will be available at the Winter Lights celebration event this Friday, with at least one design forum planned for December, Nutt said.

You can reach Staff Writer Kevin McCallum at 521-5207 or kevin.mccallum@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @srcitybeat.