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Fredonia fire hall project hits snag

OBSERVER Photo M.J. Stafford At left, Amanda Linge from construction management firm Wendel speaks to the Fredonia Board of Trustees Aug. 26 about plans for renovations to the village fire department’s headquarters. To her right are Village Clerk Annemarie Johnston and Trustees Douglas Essek and Roger Britz. A rendering of what the fire hall should look like after renovations is on the wall in the background.

Fredonia village officials set money aside in this year’s budget for repair work at the Fredonia Fire Department headquarters. There was just one problem: For weeks, no one wanted to do the work.

Amanda Linge of construction management firm Wendel, which is handling the bid process for the village, told the Board of Trustees Aug. 26 that even though they put the project out to bid at the end of June, no contractors made formal bids.

“We held a pre-bid meeting on July 10 … and no contractors showed up for it,” she said. “Coming back from that, we began reaching out to contractors to drum up some interest. We reached out to about 10 contractors. We put out an addendum and held an additional pre-bid meeting on July 16, which, again, no contractors showed up for.

“After that, we came back, we regrouped, we called those 10 contractors again and then an additional seven contractors,” she continued. “We felt that we had some interest, some contractors were acting questions. It seemed like there was going to be a viable bid. We extended the bid date … and no bids came in.”

Linge said her company explored going to a re-bid, and one contractor said he would be interested then. Wendel then went to contractors to see if they could get another contractor interested, “and actually go through and negotiate prices with them and have them possibly bid against each other,” Linge said.

When they did that, another contractor stepped forward, “and so now we have two viable contractors …we are having them compete against each other a bit to bring their prices down,” she said.

Trustee Roger Britz asked if the contractors stated why they did not want to bid. “Some of them said that they were more specialized, they didn’t want to be a general contractor for the entire project.

Some of them were just too busy to get it all done by the end of the year,” Linge said.

Trustee Kara Christina asked if getting no bids on a project was unusual. “It’s unusual but it’s been more usual lately,” Linge said. “Maybe that’s because it’s towards the end of the year … contractors have the rest of their year planned out. But no bids, we were a little shocked by that, especially with the outreach we did.”

When completed, the contract will be with the village but Wendel will oversee everything.

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