City to readvertise Walla Walla Public Library project to contractors
Hoping to shave costs and make the Walla Walla Public Library renovation project more appealing to contractors, the city will extend the construction timeline and allow material substitutions in a new call for bids.
Library Director Heather Van Tassell said the city plans to increase the working days from 200 to 240 to make the project timeline more feasible.
It will also allow the contractor to make selections or substitutions from a broader list of vendors to incorporate more cost-effective materials for things like roof assembly materials.
She said the changes will not affect the overall design or what library patrons see when they reenter the space. Features such as the Great Hall, programming space, children's library and new restrooms are still central to the project.
The changes will hopefully make the project more appealing to contractors, several of whom were interested in the project but ultimately did not submit bids.
Van Tassell said 60 contractors or subcontractors visited the library to learn more about the project before the first rounds of bids closed.
Only one contractor, Pendleton-based Kirby Nagelhout, ended up submitting a bid for the project. That bid exceeded the engineer's cost estimate by more than $1 million, and the city rejected it on Wednesday, April 8.
In outreach to contractors after the single bid was opened, Van Tassell said some told the city that they decided not to bid because they thought the process would be competitive.
"We were the first project in the area out of the gate for the year, and so some of them said, ‘Hey, this is going to be too competitive. We're going to sit back and we're going to wait for the next one,'" she said. "When we spoke to them, they were all surprised that we ultimately received only one bid."
She also said the estimate was prepared in January, and economic and geopolitical changes have introduced uncertainty in the construction market.
A member of the public and some council members asked about the impact of having a break in owner's representatives during the bid preparation process.
The city previously hired an owner's representative to oversee the project, but that relationship was discontinued. The city went without one while preparing the bid documents and then hired a new one to review the documents right before the project was advertised.
"Looking at it in hindsight, the practice should be: We don't do those delays, we don't have those gaps," Council Member Monte Willis said at the Wednesday meeting. "We bring somebody in immediately if we have a problem, and so they have as much of a runway as possible to understand the project and where we might need to make trade-offs, instead of having to kind of come up with it under a compressed timeline."
Doing a second call for bids will push back the start of construction from April of this year to June, Van Tassell said. It will still finish around the same time, in June or July 2027.
In the meantime, the library will continue operations at 238 E. Alder St. It won't move into its temporary space until construction is set to begin.
Also on Wednesday, the City Council approved the continuation of the reciprocal borrowing program that allows residents to get free cards at a number of participating libraries in the region.
Other auxiliary work continues ahead of the renovation.
"Matilde on Her Way to the Market" was lifted by a crane on Tuesday, April 7, to her temporary home in the sculpture garden of artist Nano Lopez. Matilde and her path to the market will be reincorporated in the design of a plaza outside the library on the Alder Street side.
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