By Becky Coffey, Harbor News Senior
Staff Writer:
WESTBROOK:
After an array of
delays arising from state bureaucracy, the state Department of Transportation
(DOT) finally gave the town approval to begin negotiating with the two firms
the town picked back in May to do the new town garage project.
Negotiations with
the two firms was put on hold for the past three months while the state
attorney general’s office completed its review of the town/state project
management agreement negotiated last year. The state required a project
management agreement be in place to provide accountability since the town will
rely on $1.5 million in state grant funding to pay for the project.
With the attorney
general’s approval secured, DOT and the town building committee now plan to
spend this month finalizing the contracts with the two firms including pricing.
Late in August, the
state DOT project manager and town building committee representatives met for
the first time with representatives of Weston and Sampson of Rocky Hill to
negotiate the pricing for the contract.
“The Building
Committee expects that we will begin project design work in late October,” said
Tony Marino, who chairs the town garage building committee.
Marino said he
expects design drawings and specifications to be done by late winter and that
the town would be ready to ask for construction contractor bids by early
spring.
“We plan to begin
construction on the site in the early spring,” said Marino.
As outlined in the
town/state DOT project management agreement, the town must follow specific
procedures in order to have access to the $1.5 million in state funding set
aside to pay for this project.
This process
required the town first evaluate the qualifications of firms to perform work
and then, after a rigorous selection process, to negotiate with the two
recommended firms: the first, to provide architectural and engineering
services, and the second, to provide environmental remediation services to
clean up the site and ready it for construction. This first step was finished
in May when the town’s Building Committee sent the state the names of the two
contractors they recommended.
Committee Chairman
Marino said that committee representatives would meet this week with the
environmental contractor, Milone & MacBroom of Cheshire, to begin contract
and pricing negotiations with that firm.
It was two years ago
in the fall of 2006 that the town finally voted to approve the swap of the
two-acre town garage parcel on Route 153 for the five-acre state road
maintenance site on Route 145. The DOT needed the town garage land to expand a
planned project to upgrade the existing Shore Line East Train station and add
parking. But since this project would have left the town without a public works
facility, the town’s legislators worked to secure $1.5 million in state funding
to offset the costs to the town to design and build a new town garage facility
at the Route 145 site.