U.S. Politics: End Testing, Make Schools Safe Again!

[Guest]

28 minutes ago, S John said:

2 billion is such a large sum that I really couldn’t tell you if it is entirely justified or not, but there are a lot of security considerations involved in constructing a building for the FBI that would not be present in the construction of a regular building.  Both physical security and anti-espionage.  Could see that sort of thing running the price up way past what you’d expect for just labor and materials.

This is something I'd considered, but ultimately rejected because of what I felt were two mitigating factors; height and occupancy (I'll try to keep this as brief as possible).

So, first, height - the area around Central Park in NYC has some of the highest construction costs/sq. ft. in the world. The relationship of construction costs to building height is generally considered to be U-shaped, meaning that the construction cost/floor starts high, gradually decreases as the building adds more floors, eventually bottoms out, and then eventually starts increasing quadratically. This applies to all construction, but the variables (location, mitigation measures like accounting for seismic events, etc.) shift your U-curve accordingly.

In basic terms, you can look at it this way; the cost of adding a 50th floor to your new building may be more expensive than adding floors 31-40 (as an example; there are a lot of complicated equations based on materials, labor, blah, blah, blah).

Then, occupancy - the tower I used in my example is built for billionaires to live in (or more accurately, for overseas billionaires to buy, leave empty, and use for speculation or money-laundering purposes). So I don't think they skimped on the materials there. I realize occupancy in the FBI building would be considered as exclusive in a different way, and I don't know how much materials cost to espionage-proof a building, but I can't imagine they'd be that much more than the literal tons of bronze and marble used in the NYC tower, at which point you come back to the expense of installing bronze and marble 1,400 feet above the ground.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

This seems an odd statement.  Yoho represents Gainesville and northeastern Florida, not Texas.

OOps, my bad. Before this week I vaguely recalled his name from Maher's (unsuccessful) flip a district stunt. And I confused him with Fahrenthold (the Texan Maher named). So I wanted to make a more or less witty pun on Yoho and yahoo. Which of course didn't work out.

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

2020 is not 2016. HRC did massively fuck up by ignoring her blue wall to try and run up the differences in other places. That's not what I'm advocating for. Like I've said several times over many years, I'm cautious. Don't waste your capital on a fairy tale. But this isn't one. The dream, the real dream, might actually be there. And it might not cost you as much as you'd think to chase it. If you think it's outside of your grasp, forget it. However, if you think you can actually get it, or use it as a means to bleed your opponent, reach for the stars.

She very much considered AZ flippable. Like you do with Texas now. Sure you can splash some cash there, but if Texas breaks, it would probably be more the proverbial cherry on top, and we'd be talking about an absolute wipe out. Again, this is the state that sends Ted Cruz to Washington.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 minute ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

OOps, my bad. Before this week I vaguely recalled his name from Maher's (unsuccessful) flip a district stunt. And I confused him with Fahrenthold (the Texan Maher named). So I wanted to make a more or less witty pun on Yoho and yahoo. Which of course didn't work out.

It's fun to note that the person he decided on is from my state, in a place I've campaigned a lot in, and oddly, Kline was never an asshole to me despite hearing nothing but poisonous shit about him. He'd just shake my hand and wish me well when I'd see him at events.
 

Quote

Sure you can splash some cash there

Just flash your cash like you're Bender, baby.

Now hush, let's see if Barr gets flayed. The show starts soon.

[Fez]

On the FBI building, three thoughts I have:

1) I wonder if any of that money is going towards setting up continuity of operations for the FBI while construction is ongoing. They've got funds to do their jobs already, but they don't have funds to move equipment, setup temporary offices, etc.

2) I suspect that quite a few people involved with designing and constructing FBI HQ would need to have security clearances; and that's not a cheap process. You don't want some random plumber knowing things like "The support wall is slightly weaker here because this is where the main water pipes come up from the city. If you put 500 pounds of homemade explosive here, you'd do a lot more damage than if it were against any other spot along the wall."

3) None of this should be in a COVID-19 relief bill.

[Maithanet]

Were you worried that you didn't have enough to worry about in this year's election?

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

19 minutes ago, Fez said:

3) None of this should be in a COVID-19 relief bill.

Debatable. Pork projects grease the wheels, after all.

[DMC]

8 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Debatable. Pork projects grease the wheels, after all.

It's kind of a perversion of the term to call this pork.  Hell, most of the GOP, and Trump of course, currently actively attacks the FBI.

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Debatable. Pork projects grease the wheels, after all.

Well, there is definitely a political reason why it shouldn't be in the bill, as Trump is pushing for the new building to remain where it is almost certainly because it's nearby his other D.C. graft boondoggle, which is his hotel there. He doesn't want the FBI moving out to the 'burbs because it invites competition.

But I was just looking at it from the perspective of "$1.8 billion for a government office building is absurd".

[Guest]

31 minutes ago, Fez said:

On the FBI building, three thoughts I have:

1) I wonder if any of that money is going towards setting up continuity of operations for the FBI while construction is ongoing. They've got funds to do their jobs already, but they don't have funds to move equipment, setup temporary offices, etc.

2) I suspect that quite a few people involved with designing and constructing FBI HQ would need to have security clearances; and that's not a cheap process. You don't want some random plumber knowing things like "The support wall is slightly weaker here because this is where the main water pipes come up from the city. If you put 500 pounds of homemade explosive here, you'd do a lot more damage than if it were against any other spot along the wall."

Re: #1, I haven't dug down into how the amount is allocated (not sure if that's even been released yet), but this does seem probable. Not $1.8bn probable, but I agree.

Re: #2, I'm certain that the architects/general contractors/some of the sub-contractors will be required to have security clearances (and there are probably already certain companies that cater exclusively to the federal government by having security clearances), but is having, say, your plumbing or HVAC sub-contractor receive security clearance really a thing? And even then, surely the journeymen who are actually doing the installation won't be required to undergo background checks, would they? 

I'm honestly asking because I don't know. If everyone working on the project has to be cleared, then yeah, I could imagine a skyrocketing pricetag. It'd be far cheaper to just have the laborers build it, and then just seal them up inside like they did in the olden days.

In fact, I imagine Stephen Miller is probably working on that very idea as a way to still exploit immigrant labor while avoiding having to actually pay or feed them.

[DMC]

4 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

It'd be far cheaper to just have the laborers build it, and then just seal them up inside like they did in the olden days.

Trump isn't nearly as smart as Maegor.

[Ran]

The FBI HQ was set to have 2.1 million square feet. It matches up fairly closely to 1 Manhattan West, which is I think 100% office space, has the same square footage and cost $1.9 billion.

 

[DMC]

7 minutes ago, Ran said:

It matches up fairly closely to 1 Manhattan West

1 Manhattan West is a 67-story skyscraper.  That's considerably different than the current FBI headquarters, even when taking into account the equal square footage.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Wow, 8 unarmed African Americans is less than 11 White Americans killed by the police.

Did this fuck take even the most basic of statistics courses? 

[Ran]

8 minutes ago, DMC said:

1 Manhattan West is a 67-story skyscraper.  That's considerably different than the current FBI headquarters, even when taking into account the equal square footage.

The current FBI headquarters was, in 2011, estimated by the GSA to cost $1.7 billion to renovate to continue using it. I feel like it's not weird that a replacement is going to cost at least that much.

 

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, Ran said:

The FBI HQ was set to have 2.1 million square feet. It matches up fairly closely to 1 Manhattan West, which is I think 100% office space, has the same square footage and cost $1.9 billion.

 

In some ways, this is a better apples-to-apples comparison (office-to-office, similar GFA, etc.), but I chose the 111 W. 57th Street building as comparison mostly to try to account for the cost of materials (known costs of bronze & marble and other luxury materials vs. unknown costs of counterespionage-related building materials).

If you're looking for a better apples-to-apples comparison, consider Montgomery Park (NYT article) in Baltimore, which is a 1.3 million sq. ft. office complex that was rehabilitated from the old Montgomery Ward warehouse, is Gold LEED-Certified, and cost about $75 million.

Also, even with the similar floor areas, and similar uses, 1 Manhattan West is 67 stories tall, meaning you're still running into the construction cost/floor dilemma. The new FBI building assuredly won't be nearly that tall, and will most likely still be benefitting from being on the downslope of the construction cost/floor curve.

And honestly, all of this is really just me straining at gnats because it's just stupid government spending and I'm avoiding work right now.

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, Ran said:

The current FBI headquarters was, in 2011, estimated by the GSA to cost $1.7 billion to renovate to continue using it. I feel like it's not weird that a replacement is going to cost at least that much.

 

Renovations are nearly always more expensive than building from the ground up.

Also, iirc, the pricetag of the renovations was what led to looking for a new HQ outside of DC. Afaict, Trump has been the one mainly pushing for it to remain where it's at.

[Ran]

5 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

Renovations are nearly always more expensive than building from the ground up.

Except the plan is also that this building would be larger and hold more employees. I don't know, it'd be interesting to see a break down of expected costs.

Apparently when the Hoover HQ was built -- broke ground in 1963, completed in 1975 -- it was the most expensive federal building ever built at a price tag of $126 million. That translates to just over $1 billion today.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Ran said:

Except the plan is also that this building would be larger and hold more employees. I don't know, it'd be interesting to see a break down of expected costs.

Apparently when the Hoover HQ was built -- broke ground in 1963, completed in 1975 -- it was the most expensive federal building ever built at a price tag of $126 million. That translates to just over $1 billion today.

Yeah, there are definitely a lot of complicating factors which make a normal cost estimate dodgy, so I'm mainly just using what I know to gripe about its inclusion and cost.

ETA: Goddammit, I'm sick of my phone auto-correcting "its" to "it's".

[DMC]

22 minutes ago, Ran said:

The current FBI headquarters was, in 2011, estimated by the GSA to cost $1.7 billion to renovate to continue using it. I feel like it's not weird that a replacement is going to cost at least that much.

Like @The Great Unwashed, I don't think it's a valid comparison.  Particularly because this would be the federal government instead of a private business constructing it.  Either way, like to see what the GSA says about it.

ETA:  Sorry, forgot to mention - the fact that even McConnell seems skittish about it makes me quite weary.

[Fragile Bird]

23 minutes ago, DMC said:

ETA:  Sorry, forgot to mention - the fact that even McConnell seems skittish about it makes me quite weary.

Er, weary? Or wary?