This Monday, Sequim city councilors will consider City Manager Steve Burkett’s recommendation for the design-build team for Sequim’s new civic center.

Burkett told the Gazette he will recommend Lydig Integrus to the council at their regular meeting at 6 p.m. Monday, Dec. 9, in the Sequim Transit Center.

He follows the recommendation of a committee consisting of Mayor Ken Hays, Councilors Erik Erichsen and Laura Dubois, Public Works Manager Paul Haines, Police Chief Bill Dickinson and himself.

They considered and rated the presentations provided by Lydig Integrus and BNBuilders and Miller Hull on Tuesday, Dec. 3. The two teams later in the evening presented their designs to the public.

The committee favored Lydig’s design narrowly while Burkett favored BNBuilders slightly.

“We were really fortunate,” Burkett said.”Both of them had really good designs. It could have gone either way.”

He said it came down to the look of one over the other.

“I sort of like the look of (BNBuilders) building with two story glass but a lot of people didn’t like that. They said it didn’t look like Sequim,” he said.  

“Some advantages for Lydig is that they had a larger commons area next to Sequim Avenue. A lot of people were intrigued by that.”

If the city council approves negotiations with Lydig Integrus, Burkett will enter into contract negotiations with the firm next week.

He said if they don’t reach an agreement then it’s possible he’d speak with the other team.

The City Council is tentatively set to approve a contract agreement at its first 2014 meeting on January 6.

A third team, Hoffman Construction of Seattle & Belay Architecture of Tacoma, created a design but Burkett said the committee ruled they were not compliant because they exceeded the city’s design budget by about $900,000.

Read more in the Sequim Gazette Dec. 11 edition.