Danville’s Mayor Rickey Williams, Jr says the bids received by the city for the Bresee Tower – County Court Annex Building tear down were much lower than expected. Williams says they started with 20 parties interested in the job, received 12 bids, and 11 of those bids are being considered by the Farnsworth Group, working for the city as a consultant.
Williams says the bids for the complete job, including the section of City Hall where the Annex Building boilers are located, came in between just under $2 million and $2.6 million. The mayor says simply put, the competition for winning this job drove down the bids.
AUDIO: And I think, given that everyone else saw that there were so many other people who were going to be bidding for this, that’s what made the final numbers come in so competitive.
Mayor Williams calls this a “huge blessing” for the City of Danville. With $4 million dollars having been set aside for the demolition of Bresee Tower, the idea was to use what’s left over for other needed demolitions. Now, it looks like the city’s portion of the job will cost, at the most, about $1.6 million. Williams says, that means other tear downs, and one particular clean-up project, can happen sooner.
The old Model Star Laundry at 17 N. Jackson was originally scheduled to be one of the structures torn down with extra Bresee Tower project money. After the late October fire, the necessary clean-up then became part of the agenda for extra Bresee Tower funds.
AUDIO: That means that we are going to have an additional $2.9 to $2.4 million to tear down all the other bad buildings downtown; to finish cleaning up the Model Star that we got to the ground last week; 127 and 127 1/2 North Vermilion Street, where we had to push in the front wall recently; 25 and 27 North Walnut where Studio 25 used to be. We’ll be able to not only finish and clean up those buildings, but probably most of the blighted buildings downtown.
Mayor Williams expects the contract to be awarded sometime before the end of December. The party that gets the job would then have eight months to complete the task.
