CHARLESTON, W.Va. –Kanawha County Commission President Ben Salango says that the expansion and redesign of the Judicial Annex is now under the original proposed price after previously being 60% over the $10 million dollar budget.
Ben Salango
Last October, the price for the project, which aims to expand for the addition of new magistrates and judges, came in at $16.2 million dollars however, Salango says after the bids came in on Wednesday, they have got that price down by $5.5 million dollars.
After the commission realized that they were way over what they originally planned they decided to take a step back and split the project up into the two different floors that they were wanting to redesign.
Salango, who appeared on 580 Live with Dave Allen Thursday morning, said that the fifth floor was easier to redesign because they were only adding magistrates and judges, however the issue was the first floor where they were adding, more magistrates, judges, staff and courtrooms.
He said that the bid for the fifth floor came in at $2 million dollars and the first floor came in at $8,146,953 million dollars from Pray Construction.
“That comes in around a little over 10 million dollars and it was 16, so we saved 5.5. million dollars, by doing that, it was a gamble by doing that, but it paid off,” Salango said.
He said that when they decided to split the project up into the two floors, they ran the risk of the bids coming in higher than the first time. Salango said if that happened, then they would have potentially split the annex into parts of town.
He said that the first time that they did bidding for the project, they still had COVID money, which let bidders throw out whatever price they wanted. However, Salango said that that money has run out and made the bids more competitive.
“That was what we hoped we would see, that’s kind of what we had seen, kind of the trend over the last six to eight months,” Salango said.