Asbestos to delay arts center

PROVO — Provo took possession Monday of the motel the city will tear down to make room for a new performing arts center, but workers immediately found a new complication.

Asbestos.

The deadly carcinogen wasn't a total surprise since the Travelers Inn at 469 W. Center was built in 1947, but it is another in a list of impediments that have bedeviled the arts project.

The expensive asbestos cleanup requires state oversight and specialized work crews. The work will delay the project for another two to three weeks and cost an additional $83,000, said Dick Blackham, Provo's facilities services manager.

The added cost and delay are blows because Provo already was straining to raise the final $1.2 million to pay for the center, which will cost more than $7 million. Construction was to be complete by January. Now the building, which will have a 700-seat performance hall, won't be done until June or July 2007, Blackham said.

That's tough news for the dancers, actors and singers as well as the arts patrons who hoped to see them sooner on stage in the gleaming new center, but Blackham and Mayor Lewis Billings expressed only relief at finally obtaining possession of the motel from Bob Patel.

The city condemned Patel's Travelers Inn in December, but the sides couldn't agree on a price. Patel maintains the land is worth more than $1.25 million while the city offered $875,000. Patel agreed last month to surrender the property and let a court decide the compensation.

"The cleanup will take two more weeks," Billings said, "but then it'll come down and we'll be able to go full speed. This really will untie the hands of the general contractor."

The delays caused by negotiations with Patel already left Provo facing possible fines from the general contractor for not providing the motel property by the end of March. Hogan & Associates has been able to continue working inside the old city library next to the motel, where most of the center will be housed. Workers have gutted the building and torn out the west walls that face the motel. The stage will extend out of the old library onto the motel land.

Renovation of the city's 911 dispatch center, housed on the east end of the first floor of the former library, was not disrupted.

Because Hogan has been able to continue with some work, the company and the city are negotiating a settlement of the fine.