Mall demolition may be a lot cheaper than expected

Demolishing the mall will be cheaper than city officials expected.
Before city Purchasing Agent Roger Rousseau plowed Tuesday through the 13 bids submitted for the job of knocking down the mall, nobody quite knew what to expect.
It turned out that the Trumbull-based Standard Demolition Services offered to do the job for $987,675, about half what officials anticipated.
“I’m happy,” said Mayor Art Ward. “This is a good way to start my first day.”
“We’re finally starting to see the light for the revitalization of our downtown,” the mayor said.
City councilors unanimously agreed to award the contract Tuesday and to authorize Ward to file for a demolition permit for the city-owned mall, which could be entirely gone before spring.
Rousseau said he had no trouble recommending the city hire Standard Demolition, the low bidder, because the company has a good reputation. He said he checked on its work in Danbury, Bridgeport and New Britain.
If a firm he didn’t know had emerged on top, he said, he would need more time to investigate its track record.
The contract requires the company to raze the mall and the concrete pad on which it sits by the end of March. It also has to haul away to debris.
The city plans to start seeking proposals from developers for the 17-acre mall site soon.
Rousseau said there’s no reason to delay the process until the mall is actually down because the work is in motion now.
One unresolved issue is whether it might be better to leave the concrete pad in place on the site rather than haul it away, too.
City Councilor Mike Rimcoski said that he’s concerned about possible environmental contamination that might be unleashed if the pad is removed, potentially making the city’s plans for the site more difficult.
But Rousseau said that environmental firms have already checked for problems and found that there is enough construction fill beneath the pad that removing it won’t disturb the original soil on the site that might have been polluted years ago.
There is no risk of hitting contaminated soil, he said.
Two Bristol firms that bid on the contract sought much higher amounts to do the work.
Carpenter Companies wanted $2.3 million to take a wrecking ball to the mall while D’Amato Construction bid $2.8 million.
City Councilor Frank Nicastro said that officials are often called on to hand out bids to local firms, but their obligation is also to look out for taxpayers. In this case, he said, the price was much cheaper to hire the Trumbull company.
Other bids were even higher, but the bulk of the bids were less than $2 million, some not much more than the low bidder.
Rousseau said he thinks the city firms may have based their prices on outdated environmental reports on the site.
All of the bid results are available online at: Purchasing office bid results link.

Note: An earlier version of this story erred in calling another company the low bidder. After the bids were opened and reviewed, Rousseau discovered a firm other than the apparent low bidder was actually cheaper because it included the price of removing the slab as part of its base bid. Hence, the Trumbull company got the contract.
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Copyright 2007. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com