A change order, not an amendment: How Denver moved $18 million past City Council
By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice
A contractor digging up 16th Street hit a brick sewer the city hadn't mapped. The cost of Denver's signature downtown project jumped by $18 million, the finish line slid back nearly a year, and City Council found out after the deal was done.
That sequence sits at the heart of a new audit from Denver Auditor Timothy O'Brien, released Aug. 20. The report walks through how the 16th Street Improvement Project grew from a $149 million council approval in 2021 to a final cost of about $175.6 million, and how the single biggest change along the way never came to a council vote.
How $18 million skipped the council
The Department of Transportation & Infrastructure (DOTI) hired PCL Construction Services to rebuild the roa...