ThisWeek 09/19/2013
After a failed attempt to secure an acceptable bid earlier this year, Groveport’s Town Center project appears to have found its footing.
Groveport City Council agreed Sept. 9 to authorize City Administrator Marsha Hall to move forward with a bid from Pinnacle Construction and Development Group of Cleveland, in the amount of $859,080.39.
City officials tweaked the construction schedule, shifting parts of the work from this fall to next spring and finding a different solution for materials sourcing. Their work appears to have paid off in this round of bidding.
The city engineer’s original cost estimate for the project was $865,000; the original attempt at soliciting bids for the project resulted in only one bid for a total cost of $1,043,326.
The latest round of bidding also produced a bid from Park Enterprise, which Assistant City Administrator Jeff Green said was significantly higher than the bid from Pinnacle, although he said he didn’t have the exact figure.
With the council’s OK, Hall said there shouldn’t be any more roadblocks in the way of the project moving forward.
“The updated construction schedule is as follows: a notice to proceed and pre-construction meeting to be preliminarily held the week of Sept. 16-20.
“Then, all grading and sub-base of the parking is to be completed by the end of November; with pad ready for start of the first building,” she said. “Substantial completion scheduled for May 9, 2014, in time for the asphalt plants to be opened.”
The Town Center project was approved in April as a public-private partnership with developer Rick Foreman, who wants to open his third Ace Hardware as the anchor tenant in the development. Originally, Foreman hoped to break ground by July 1 on the Ace Hardware building. The city still hopes to meet the original goal of completing the development next spring.
Once the Town Center is finished, it will include public parking, a 10,000-square-foot Ace Hardware store and a 7,200-square-foot, multi-tenant, mixed-use building that city officials estimate could bring 50 new jobs to Groveport.