Story by Aaron Parker
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The Kanawha County Commission is continuing its discussions surrounding the county’s judicial building renovation project.
The Commission decided last week to go to a re-bid on the project that looks to renovate and add space to the building as it welcomes in a circuit judge and three magistrates at the start of the year.
The original high bid on the project came in at $16 million, nearly $3 million more than the commission wanted to sign off on. In October, the Commission reported that the county’s team of architects, Silling Architects, would be entering a 30-day negotiation with the contractor to try to get the price cut down. The high-bidding contractor stood firm on their price, and the Commission sent the project back to a re-bid.
Commissioner Ben Salango says there were good conversations between the commission and Silling during Silling’s negotiation process with the high bidder, but there was ultimately no movement.
“We participated in a number of discussions and Zooms, and unfortunately, we just couldn’t get down to where we needed to be,” Salango said.
Salango says that a problem in the first bid was not knowing where every dollar was going to.
“One of the problem’s we had when we were negotiating is that we didn’t know how much money was allocated to any particular thing, and so, when we asked for savings, we didn’t know if we were getting the savings,” Salango said.
Commission President Lance Wheeler says the county has too many projects on the horizon to be using everything on the judicial building.
“We need to save every dollar because we have a lot of projects moving forward in this county, and we’ve got to be able to afford those projects on the budget that we have. If we can’t do that, then this is the only project in 2025 that this county commission will be able to afford,” Wheeler said. “It’s time that we save that money. It’s time that we look at measures that the rest of the state are already following, and I think that if we do all of those measures, we can get the price that we’re looking for.”
The upcoming re-bid has forced Silling Architects to do a bit of a re-design on the renovations. The plan now focuses on a first phase renovating the building’s fifth floor, with a second phase working on the first and second floor.
Salango says the first phase should be ready to be renovated right away, and phase two should follow after in a timely manner.
“The fifth floor is essentially ready to go. We have a plan, we just have to re-bid it, and then the first floor, we’re going to have to make some modifications,” Salango said. “While they’re working on the fifth flood, we think we can get the modifications done on the first floor to put it out to bid.”
Jody Driggs, of Silling Architects, says the biggest upcoming chance before the new bid will be moving to daytime work.
“The big change there would be to move to day shift for the labor when it was originally for night shift,” Driggs said. “I think that discouraged a lot of bidders.”
Commissioners agreed that the original plan to do work during nighttime hours is likely what drove away potential bidders. Seven pre-bidders came before the original bid, with only two contractors placing bids.
Wheeler says the more interested contractors that come and bid, the better chance of getting a price to the county’s liking.
“We know in a free market, the more bidders that you’re going to get, the more likelihood that you’re going to get the best bang for your buck in the price, and when I say that, we’re talking about taxpayer money,” Wheeler said. “I think at this point, this commission has made it very public that we want to save as much dollars we can.”