Dover’s Legislative Hall renovation and addition project — along with a new parking structure and underground pedestrian tunnel — has been in the works for years, but the undertaking is expecting to break ground this year.
Despite capital budget requests expecting to total $150 million, Project Manager Phillip Conte of Studio JAED explains the addition and parking garage are projected to cost $122 million, now with an additional 2-3% escalation.
Conte says the increase is due to some unforeseen stormwater management work needed at the parking garage site.
“We are doing some additional stormwater work on the garage project in anticipation of the Legislative Hall addition, so we sort of took one step forward, but inadvertently there were unintended consequences, and we ended up taking two steps back," he said.
But he feels the 3% increase is an adequate assessment of the projects' needs.
“I'm comfortable with that because that increase does represent some increased allowances and contingencies that we added to the project, as well as some of the additional site work that we're picking up. So across the entire project, I'm comfortable at like 2% or 3% right now telling you that we're higher than previous.”
The parking garage will be put up in the current Del-One Credit Union lot with 97 restricted parking spaces, 248 public spaces and an underground pedestrian tunnel connecting the structure to Leg Hall.
Leg Hall is expecting a 60% increase in public spaces, a 32% increase in private spaces and a 73% increase in spaces for operations and infrastructure.
The parking garage is still expected to be completed by the end of 2026 — starting construction in July 2025 — and the addition is anticipated to be done before the 2029 legislative session — starting construction in July 2026.
