Race to the bottom far from over as low bid comes in at almost a quarter of expected cost.
When the town of Manchester in Connecticut unsealed competitive bids for demolition of the dilapidated Broad Street Parkade site last week it received a pleasant surprise – a number of the bids came in significantly lower than expected.
The town purchased the parkade, a long abandoned shopping plaza that sits on almost 20 acres of land on Broad Street, in March of this year for $1.85 million and have been proceeding ahead with remediation work at the site. The parcel is contaminated by asbestos and PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, both classified toxins, which has complicated the demolition efforts.
The town expected the total cost to remediate and demolish the parcel to cost from $1.9 million to $2.3 million, and has already spent money on the remediation efforts, but last week’s bids revealed that the cost to demolish the structure could be significantly less than expected. The Board of Directors approved $2.3 million of an $8 million bond referendum for the project in June.
But the lowest bid for the work, by Costello Dismantling Company out of Middleboro, was estimated at $566,150, while the town also received two other bids below the $600,000 threshold; the highest bid, from Enviroguard LLC. Out of Seymour, came in at $2.4 million.
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