HUMBOLDT — Council has approved two tenders for work at Centennial Park that represents the bulk of the project’s $1.8 million cost.
Hergott Electric will be doing the electrical work under the newly-paved parking lot at a cost of $130,000, while Brockman Enterprises will do the parking lot itself for $896,000.
Hergott should be completing the work by Aug. 14, while Brockman should be done their part Oct. 31.
Rob Muench, Humboldt’s mayor, said during a special council meeting July 15 it’s been a long process to get to this point.
“I remember around 10 years ago where we first drew up some of those plans, so it has been a long haul, but I think we're gonna end up with a project that's gonna carry us forward for a number of years in the community with our facilities.”
Of the remaining parts of the project, the ball diamond tender has been awarded and is expected to cost $285,000. There have been no tenders yet for trail lighting, landscaping and utility connections for a washroom/concession, which is expected to cost $420,000, nor the Highway 5 turning lane, which is expected to come in at $90,000.
At this point, the project is $34,000 above budget – around two per cent more than expected.
“There are some areas that we can tweak a little bit, and find some cost savings still in order to bring that down within the budget scope,” said Michael Ulriksen, the city’s leisure services director.
“I think certainly a two per cent overrun is not big enough to stop us from what we're doing and I fully support the work that we're doing there,” said Councillor Lorne Pratchler.
Pratchler asked city staff why it took so long for city staff to get tenders out for the project. Ulriksen said there was a lot more back and forth between the city and the consulting engineer, Catterall and Wright, than what they had expected.
“We also saw in some of the earlier cost estimates that they had provided to us that we were a little bit larger than what we had anticipated ourselves and what we had budgeted,” he said. “We did have to go back to the drawing board on a couple different areas to try and bring some of that [cost] down.”
One additional cost added to the project was a $115,000 storm water basin. Muench said that while he wasn’t a fan of spending such an amount, it was something the city had to do now rather than later. He added where the new parking lot would be there was a lake after the two recent rainstorms in the city.
