Tuesday (March 7th) night’s Danville City Council meeting will include a proposal to go ahead and accept the $12.6 million bid from Danville’s Schomburg and Schomburg Construction for the new Garfield Park Pool. At the last City Council meeting, City Engineer Sam Cole said that the bids for both the new Garfield Park and the pool, being paid for by COVID relief money, had come in higher than expected; and some scaling back on the plans might be needed. But with Schomburg and Schomburg being the only party that bid on the pool part, Cole says the city now believes that, after some further review, any pool adjustments can be figured out once the bid is accepted.
AUDIO: It’s a process we normally go through. However, with the price being as high as it is, we wanted to get a better handle on where we thought we could save money before we awarded the bids, and make sure we felt like there were some opportunities to do so.
Cole says the park part is a different ballgame. First, there’s more room for adjustments, such as phasing parts in over more time. In addition, the park’s completion was aimed for the end of 2024, but the pool’s opening is still aimed for Memorial Day Weekend of 2024. Simply put, the final park bid, where multiple parties have shown interest, can wait for a bit.
AUDIO: We don’t know that there’s any risk in rebidding that. I think Schomburg would personally love for us to award that piece too, because they were the low bidder on that project also. But that’s just not something that we’re able to do at this point. So we just need to revisit that, and kind of rescope that project; figure out if we need to phase it, and then go out for bid again later on.
Tuesday night’s Danville City Council meeting is set for 6 PM; with Schomburg and Schomburg’s Garfield Pool bid on the agenda.
