With only one bid in hand for the major makeover planned for the city’s Eagle Harbor Waterfront Park, Bainbridge Island city officials are considering rejecting the bid and starting over next year.
Rejecting the bid, if approved by the Bainbridge city council later this month, will push back the start of construction to 2017. City officials had hoped to begin work on the project this summer, but recently agreed to delay the start of construction until after Bainbridge’s Grand Old Fourth of July celebration this summer after the chamber of commerce raised concerns over a park shut-down during its biggest event of the year.
Now, the park project is facing another delay.
The bid opening for the project was March 22, and just one bid was received, from the Bainbridge-based firm of Redside Construction.
Redside Construction submitted a base bid of $1.6 million for the project — which was higher than the city’s engineer estimate for the work, which pegged the cost between $1.1 million and $1.25 million.
That work includes clearing and grading at the park for improvements that include new paths, a plaza, sidewalks, lighting, stormwater rain gardens and other features.
The Redside bid also included add-ons for other parts of the park improvement project, such as a picnic shelter that would cost almost $400,000 (or more than a half million dollars if a solar roof is put on top).
The bid for the entire project, with picnic pavilion, solar roof and parking lot, was $2.1 million.
No decision yet
City Manager Doug Schulze said he didn’t know what the council will do with the sole bid.
The council could accept the bid, or reject it and start over.
“We will be presenting options, including rejecting the bid and re-advertising in a few weeks, rejecting the bid and re-advertising in 2017, accepting the bid with an increased budget, or accepting the bid without the picnic shelter or other add-ons,” Schulze said in an email to the Review.
Officials with Redside, however, are worried the city will reject the bid and have started lobbying the council to accept their bid.
The company sent an email to council members on Tuesday, asking for their support for giving the construction contract to the Bainbridge company.
“We would like to express how excited we are at the opportunity to be a part of a local project like this one, and how much it would mean to us and the many other local small businesses who participated in our bid to have access to a $1.5 million anchor project in our hometown one small block from our main office,” Sam Berry, president and owner of Redside Construction, wrote in an April 12 email to the council.
Berry said awarding the project to a Bainbridge company would keep local dollars on the island, and he noted that the construction company had participated in the past on work at Eagle Harbor Waterfront Park, the boat launch and the boardwalk along the harbor.
The company was also the firm that completed the Rockaway Beach Road stabilization project for Bainbridge Island, and has completed other projects in recent years such as a boat launch in Douglas County, an expansion of the Hat Island Marina, and the South Lake Shoreline Restoration project for the state Department of Natural Resources.
Bidder pleads for help
Berry also said a move to rebid the Waterfront Park project would mean “great additional cost to the city and the community.”
“We need your help,” Berry wrote in his email to city council members. “Today we have come to understand that the engineers estimate for the project was too low for the city managers to award the project to us, despite that other bidders were contacted by the city and our bid value was vetted as a reasonable price for the work. Our understanding is that Public Works may be recommending a rebid for the sole reason that their engineers estimate was too low in comparison to our bid.
“We should not lose this opportunity simply because an engineer’s estimate was not accurate, this is about local jobs not just dollars and cents, so if our bid was rejected on that basis due to no fault of our own it would be at great cost to us. We’d lose the job entirely and the city may go from our one bid to no bids (our bid is on the table, we almost certainly would not rebid because all bidders now know our number), so this shortsighted of a decision needs to be stopped,” he added.
Long time coming
The city has been working on plans to rebuild Waterfront Park for more than two years.
Bainbridge approved the final design for the park rebuild in May 2015, and had hoped to begin construction last fall.
Funding for the entire project has proven elusive. City officials decided to build the project in phases after grant money was not obtained that would have helped cover the costs of shoreside improvements and an expansion of the city dock.
The council is expected to discuss the bid for the park project at its meeting on April 26.
