HUNTSVILLE, AL -- The recently completed Huntsville Museum of Art expansion downtown ended up costing less than expected.

Last week, the City Council approved a series of construction and landscaping changes at the new Davidson Center for the Arts that raised the price tag by $143,915.

Even so, city Facilities Projects Manager Chris O'Neil said the builder's final tab of $6,330,126 is $519,874 below the original $6.85 million budget.

The total is closer to $7.5 million when architect's fees, furniture and other nonconstruction items are included.

O'Neil could recall only one other government building project finishing in the black during his more than 16 years with the city: the Parking and Public Transit headquarters on Church Street.

"Those are kind of few and far between," O'Neil said Monday.

EMJ Corp. of Chattanooga was hired in October 2009 to build the 21,000-square-foot museum addition.

The company's price of $5,611,500 was the lowest among seven contractors vying for the job - and $1.2 million below what city officials had planned to spend.

Unforeseen problems and museum requests for extra work raised the building's price by $718,626, O'Neil said.

The two-story museum wing in the northeast corner of Big Spring International Park opened in mid-November. It is named for Davidson Technologies founder Dr. Julian Davidson and his wife, Dorothy, who pledged $2 million toward the project.

The city and art museum board of directors agreed to split the costs. Huntsville chipped in $4 million - half from liquor and lodging taxes, the rest borrowed as part of a broader plan to improve downtown and rebuild Lee High School.

With the construction savings, the museum's share will be about $3.5 million.

Middie Thompson, who chairs the museum board, said she hopes all those costs will be covered by private donations. About 170 individual and corporate donors pledged money to the museum's "Masterpiece in the Making" capital campaign.