In Connecticut, Building Plans Hit the Skids

This article's "blurb" ends with a phrase that we all should be thinking about as we slash and burn budgets of various sorts: "The governor's budget freeze has put state school projects on ice, but [W]ill it really save money? (emphasis added) And SCUPer Nancy Tinker of Eastern Connecticut State University is interviewed to help make the point:

But that's not how Nancy Tinker, director of facilities, management and planning at Eastern Connecticut State University in Willimantic, sees it. Tinker says an extra year will make a big difference, because time is money — money lost — and in "no place is that more true than in the construction industry."

"In the long run, unless you cancel a project altogether, you don't save anything by delaying things," says Tinker. "It actually costs the taxpayers more, or the taxpayers get less than they could have for the same amount of money."

To prove her point, Tinker cites ECSU's planned $71.5 million fine arts building, a project she describes as "critical" to the school's stated goal of becoming the state's premier public liberal arts college. Planning for the fine arts center was completed in 2000, when the cost was estimated at $54 million; eight years later it has gone up by $17.5 million, or 32 percent.

"When they finished the [planning] in 2000, they didn't think it was going to take eight years to get to the next phase," says Tinker.