Muni court: Every construction bid rejected

By Dean Shipley

Staff Writer

Too high.

Based on the estimate for the proposed municipal courthouse in London — $3,172,000 — by Schorr Architects, the 12 bids submitted Monday afternoon for the project were too high.

As a result the commissioners met following the bid opening Monday afternoon and decided to reject all the bids.

We rejected all bids,” said commissioner Paul Gross. He said as a county entity, the commission has to abide by the Ohio Revised Code (ORC) which allows them to accept a bid within 10 percent of the estimate for the project. All 12 bids were rejected because they were all well beyond the 10 percent threshold.

Gross said the commissioners will procure a revised estimate and go back out to receive bids.

“We relied on the architect and they let us down and got it wrong,” Gross said. “We were caught by surprise. Since everything was so much higher, we took that course of action.”

Commissioner Mark Forrest said he was disappointed in the architect because its estimate was low in comparison to true market cost.

Commissioners were pleased by the turnout of 12 bidders on the project.

Rancour said he was not familiar with the project and could not comment further. He said he had to fill in for company principal Tony Schorr who was out of the office “on a personal matter.”

Looking at just the base bids for the project the following companies — in alphabetical order — bid as follows:

• Barton Malow: $4,369,000

• C & N Contractors, Inc.: $4,350,000

• Charter Hill: $4,271,000

• Kapp Construction: $3,961,000

• Miles-McClellan Construction Co., Inc.: $4,482,605

• Robertson Construction Services: $4,380,000

• Staffco Construction, Inc.: $4,300,000

• Summit Construction: $4,868,000

• Thomas & Marker Construction Co.: $4,621,400

• Two K General: $5,000,000

• Williamson Builders: $4,277,098

Other alternate items, including finished basement, additional ceramic wall tile, modified bituminous roofing system and photovoltaic solar array system were also bid by the contractors.

Kapp Construction of Springfield, which bid $3,961,000, was the lowest bid among the 12. The bid amount was $789,000 more than the estimate by the architect.