Comparative building costs
Building a house for $1MM is a lot different than constructing a "public" building that must have sprinklers, be ADA compliant, elevators, etc. Probably the house has eight foot ceilings and spans of 12-14 feet. Driving trucks and trailers through the building requires greater spans, and weight bearing capacity. Can you hoist a 10,000 lb boat from that household ceiling? What happens to the floor when you drop a V-8 engine on it? Does it sag when you put a couple of engines in the same room? It's just not close to being the same thing.
I believe the training folks operate out of Belmont, so there are offices and classrooms there. Dispatch and other functions moved to Concord when the MP merged into SP.
If you want more MP, they need the support structures, room, repair shops.. You can still support them by checking the block that says donate all or part of my gas tax refund to the Navigation Safety Fund. It's a tax-deductible donation.
I think it is premature to assume that $7.8MM will be spent. Wait until the bids come in. The $$ cannot be moved to other purposes, so they can't just "spend it because it is there."
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