Brookfield happy with high school bid results
February 23, 2006
BROOKFIELD - Brookfield High School officials dug two gold-plated shovels out of a closet Wednesday where they've collected dust for nearly two years. Finally, they will be of use.
Construction bids for the school's $30-million renovation and addition came in about $500,000 under budget. Earlier bids for the project, which voters first approved in April 2003, came in last summer at $4 million over budget. Officials, however, were quick to call the results preliminary Wednesday. They said they used "the apparent low bidders" in tallying the results but need to examine the bid documents in the next two days. "We're happy with the bid results. We did a lot of work to get the project within budget," said Ed Barrett of Morganti, construction manager company that will run the project. Barrett credited the competitive bids to the timing of the bid requests, just when construction companies are setting up their spring schedules and the quantity of the bids. When the town opened bids in July, lots of companies were busy completing other school projects so only 70 sets of bid packages were submitted, Barrett said. "This time we had 151 packages. There definitely was greater interest this time around," Barrett said. "The material costs haven't changed that much. It's definitely the aggressiveness of the bids."
The project cost was reduced from $31 million to $30.35 million, because $650,000 for a new septic system was dropped when the project was reworked. Instead, the town will install a sewer hookup. "The bottom line was it was worth the wait to do it right. Now, we can move forward," Superintendent John Goetz said. "We were cautiously optimistic going into this and we were right." Goetz said if the bids are true, then he might be able to restore some items cut when the project was reworked, such as new poles and lights for the football field and additional parking.
The construction project, which could begin in six weeks, will add 32,000 square feet of new space and renovate much of the existing 163,000-square-foot building. The largest change will add 12 science classrooms, three on the main floor and nine on the lower level. As part of that addition, the library media center will increase from 7,500 to 11,500 square feet and include a television studio. The project also calls for a new building with a sprinkler and ventilation system. The school was built in 1959 as a junior high for 944 students and was last renovated in the 1970s. Enrollment projections indicate the school should be ready to accommodate 1,200 students by 2010. The project was designed by the architectural firm of Jeter, Cook and Jepson. The state is expected to pay about 21 percent of the cost, and the town will pay 78 percent or $24.3 million.