BHS project goes out to bid
Published 5:00 am Saturday, March 17, 2007
Estimates put the new building at $20.6 million, 3 percent over budget.
He left out the part about the wild blue yonder.
But even repeating just half of the famous song lyric, Bainbridge School Board President Bruce Weiland encapsulated the excitement, and anxiety, felt by school officials as they launch the Bainbridge High School renovation into a hazy bidding climate.
“Off we go,” said a smiling Weiland, after the school board on Thursday authorized the design team to go to bid with the project, the centerpiece of which will be a new two-story, 70,000-square-foot “200 building.”
Beginning Wednesday, contractors will be able to study construction plans to determine whether they want to place a bid.
Bidding won’t close until April 18, but Capital Facilities Director Tamela VanWinkle said planners should be able to gauge interest in the project within a few weeks.
Ideally, she said, the more bidders the better, but the district is hoping for at least two or three competitors to help drive the price down.
The school district’s final cost estimate for the BHS renovation is just under $20.6 million.
That number is about 3 percent higher than the district would like, but is within close enough range to move ahead with the bid, Weiland said.
VanWinkle said the higher-than-expected cost of glass was among the reasons for the inflated price tag. Officials have been fretting for months about how rising construction costs and competing projects will impact the actual cost of the work, but they won’t know for sure until next month, when the final bids come in.
“They aren’t bound by our estimates,” Weiland said, of contractors. “At some point we have to stop guessing and go to the ultimate test in the real world.”
The scale of the project, which is smaller than some school projects elsewhere, could improve the district’s chances.
Architect Butch Reifert pointed to difficulties faced by larger projects across Puget Sound, in particular an estimated $70 million project at Lynnwood High School that has thus far only attracted one bidder. Reifert said the high and low bids within a given project typically differ by five to 10 percent.
Knowing the uncertainty of the situation, VanWinkle said the district has held back some money from the budget to allow for bid discrepancies.
Planners, she said, have done everything they can to ensure the district’s estimate is as realistic as possible.
“If we were to play games, it wouldn’t serve anyone well,” she said. “It’s possible that someone would get oh so greedy and bid way above our estimate, but it costs companies a lot of money to bid on these projects.”
Meanwhile, despite a petition for review filed with the Growth Management Hearings Board by island resident Daniel Smith that challenges the use of impact fees on school projects – including at least $2 million worth of impact fees budgeted for use in the high school renovation – the district is moving ahead with the project as planned.
The city, which collects impact fees from builders and holds the money until the district requests it for an eligible capital project, recently transferred $1.9 million in impact fees to the district.
Weiland said that before the transfer Bainbridge schools hadn’t sought impact fee money for at least three years.
He also said the project is eligible for up to $9 million in impact fee funding, though the district would use much less than that.
Whether the money would have to be returned should Smith prevail remains unclear.
District officials believe it wouldn’t, but members of the Capital Projects Advisory Committee – of which Smith is a part – urged board members to heed the possibility.
Along with “aggressively” pursuing legal action against Smith, the committee asked the board to “notify the public of a possible $2 million shortfall for 2006 capital projects funding and future capital projects funding, should the petitioner prevail,” according to a statement read by CPAC member Chris Van Dyk, on behalf of the committee.
