The bids are in for Phase II of the 15th Street municipal facility project—the main building itself—and they’re ballpark.

At its meeting last night the Chesterton Town Council voted 5-0 to take those bids under advisement.

The bids, from lowest to highest:

•Bergland Construction of Chesterton: $1,927,000.

•Hasse Construction Company Inc. of Calumet City, Ill.: $1,941,000.

•Precision Builders Inc. of Gary: $1,967,200.

•Gariup Construction Company Inc. of Gary: $1,997,700.

•Larson-Danielson Construction Company of LaPorte: $2,018,255.

•Gough Inc. of Merrillville: $2,251,890.

That building—the future headquarters of the Street, Engineering, and Parks & Recreation departments as well as the Stormwater Utility—will be built on the site of the former United Tractor facility at 116 N. 15th Street.

Also currently under construction at the site, in Phase I of the project, are a street-salt storage building and a cold storage building, the latter to house vehicles and equipment not currently in seasonal use. The Ross Group Inc. of Portage was awarded that job with the lowest responsive and responsible bid of $619,680.

Phase II, beginning with the demolition of the United Tractor factory, should commence before the end of the summer.

Total estimated cost of the project: $2.615 million, the bulk to be financed by a general obligation bond somewhat under $2 million and the balance in Major Moves funding provided by the State of Indiana.

The United Tractor Company of Cleveland, Ohio, closed its Chesterton facility in 1999. For years it remained vacant (a barbecue sauce bottling and distribution company did operate there briefly), a nice piece of industrial property no one wanted in the heart of Chesterton.

Then, in April 2005, the Utility purchased it for $375,000, the idea being to retrofit the facility and then headquarter many of the town’s functions there. At the time former Utility superintendent Steve Yagelski expressed the confidence that most of the renovation of the building could be done in-house.

But that proved not to be the case. In fact, as became apparent last year, renovation would be prohibitively expense. So the Town Council made the decision to raze it all and build from scratch.

In related business, members voted 5-0 to approve Change Order No. 1 for Phase I of the 15th Street municipal facility project.

That change order is comprised of four separate components: lowering the height of the salt-storage building, for a deduction of $4,857; upgrading the concrete for the floor slabs of both buildings, for an addition of $2,800; increasing the size of the overhead door for the cold storage building, for an addition of $5,781; and deleting liner panels from both buildings, for a deduction of $7,750.

On balance, Change Order No. 1 decreases the contract price of $619,680 by a total of $4,026.

Meanwhile, members voted 5-0 to award the Fifth Street sidewalk contract to Chicago Concrete and Construction Company of Orland Park, Ill., for its lowest responsive and responsible bid of $70,843.75.

The next lowest bid was that of Gariup Construction Company: $81,160.

Street Commissioner John Schnadenberg noted that he was recommending Chicago Concrete and Contruction’s low bid not without some uneasiness. “It’s a new company we have not worked with before,” he said. “I’m a little apprehensive but their references have all checked out.”

Town Attorney Chuck Lukmann added that the company will have to post a performance bond in the amount of the contract price before work starts.

Under state statute, a municipality must award contracts to the lowest responsive and responsible bidder.

One other major project has begun in the last week or so: NIPSCO’s re-location of natural-gas service to the buildings along South Calumet Ave.—roughly between the Norfolk-Southern right-of-way and West Indiana Ave.—from the front of the businesses to the rear along Lois Lane.

NIPSCO is doing so in conjunction with the Downtown sanitary sewer replacement and separation project, and its decision to re-locate gas service behind the buildings will greatly facilitate the Utility’s work next year when it excavates South Calumet Road for that project, by allowing crews to simply plow through the abandoned natural-gas laterals instead of their having to dig around them.

At some point this summer the intersection of South Calumet Road and West Indiana Ave. will be closed briefly while NIPSCO connects the new service along Lois Lane to the gas main on the west side of South Cal. Next year NIPSCO will install an entirely new gas main on the east side, after South Cal has been excavated to expose the sanitary sewer main to be replaced.

Posted 6/15/2010