Two things related to New York City's Department of Design and Construction (DDC) landed in my inbox yesterday:
A report from DNAinfo with the headline, "Costs Balloon for City Construction Projects Designed by Elite Architects."A heads up on an event next week at the Center for Architecture: Unveiling Design Excellence 2.0: The Next Wave of DDC Projects.The second optimistically asserts that the DDC projects (police stations, libraries, fire stations, etc.), "strengthen thriving neighborhoods, bolster economic growth and create jobs," while the first questions the need for designs that "go far over cost and fall behind schedule." One example of ballooning costs in the DNAinfo article is Rafael Viñoly's 121st Precinct Police Station in Staten Island, which "surged from an original price tag of $3 million to more than $73 million by the time it opened in 2013."
[The 121st Precinct Police Station House on Staten Island, designed by Rafael Viñoly Architects]

That nearly 25-times cost increase sounds stupendous, but keep in mind the original cost estimate was made without a design; the same state of affairs applies to the other projects mentioned in the article, though they did not balloon to nearly the same degree. With DDC's focus on design excellence for public buildings across the five boroughs, it seems that establishing an estimate on a per-sf basis is a recipe for disaster: costs will increase due to materials and labor over t...