Raw low bids total $12.6M for Bloomington’s Showers West police, fire project: Awards next week

On Monday at Bloomington’s city hall, bids were opened for construction work in connection with the renovation to the Showers West portion of the building.

The total of the lowest of the bids for each of the four packages came to about $12.6 million. The four packages were: general trades; fire protection; mechanicals and plumbing; and electrical.

The Showers West project is supposed to remodel the portion of the city hall building that was purchased early this year, to make the 110-year-old brick former factory building into a suitable home for the fire department administration and police department operations.

Outgoing mayor John Hamilton’s plan is to sell the city’s police station, and move police operations to Showers West.

Reading aloud the bids in the McCloskey Room of city hall starting at 12:15 p.m. on Monday was Christopher Ciolli, a senior project manager with Weddle Bros. Construction, the city’s construction manager for the project.

Attending the bid opening on the city’s side were deputy mayor Larry Allen and assistant city attorney Heather Lacy. Also packed into the McCloskey Room to watch were several of the contractors who submitted bids.

The bids still have to be reviewed to ensure that they are responsive to the city’s requirements. That means the contractor offering the lowest bid might not necessarily be the one who receives the award.

The votes on the construction contract awards are expected at the next meeting of Bloomington’s redevelopment commission (RDC), scheduled for next Monday, Dec. 18.

It’s the RDC’s decision to make on the construction award packages, because it is the RDC that acted as the buyer when the city purchased the Showers West portion of the city hall building in early 2023.

One member of the five-member RDC will almost certainly have to recuse himself from voting on the contract for electrical bids. RDC member Randy Cassady is owner of Cassady Electric, which is the apparent lower of two bids on the electrical work.

Cassady Electric’s bid of $3,645,900 was $2.3 million less than the bid from Electric Plus, which came in at $5,966,770. In percentage terms, Cassady Electric’s bid was just 61 percent of the bid put in by Electric Plus.

The bids for other packages also showed a wide range. For general trades, the lowest bid was from SCS Construction Services, Inc. at $4,617,000. That was just 65 percent of the bid submitted by Force Construction Co Inc, which was $7,133,401.

The sum of the highest bids for each package is $17,645,171. But that’s not as high as a combination bid on all four packages together, which came from Force Construction: $18,468,600.

The roughly $12.6-million total looks like it puts the Hamilton administration at least in the ballpark of its $15-million construction budget for the project.

According to deputy mayor Larry Allen at last Monday’s city council work session, the city has already spent about $600,000 in design fees. The project architect is StudioAXIS.

But at last week’s city council’s work session, representatives of the police department’s collective bargaining unit questioned whether the current round of construction bids covered all the costs of the project. Specifically, they question whether there are significant associated with the external part of the building, which would include security measures for the parking lot.

Police union president Paul Post indicated at the work session that his understanding, based on meetings he’d attended over the last month, was that there would be two sets of construction packages put out for bid—one for the internal work plus the generators, and another one for the work outside the building.

Bloomington’s redevelopment commission meetings are held at city hall. The start time for the Monday, Dec. 18 at 5 p.m.

The B Square has compiled a complete listing of bids read aloud on Monday into a shared Google Sheet.