Bids for the long-awaited underpass project beneath the railroad tracks in Uptown Normal have come back. The low bid is $35.16 million.
There were two bids. P.J. Hoerr 's proposal was for nearly $41 million. The century-old contractor has offices in Bloomington-Normal and Peoria. The lower bid is from Millstone Weber, a younger firm founded a decade ago, in St. Louis, according to its website.
Normal Public Works Director Ryan Otto said staff will review the particulars of the two proposals.
"We enter a bid analysis period. So, we take a look at the bids, analyze those, and make a recommendation to the council," said Otto.
Part of that analysis could include so-called "value engineering," where the town picks options or makes choices that will reduce the cost, while also removing desired or designed elements it can live without.
The underpass project is designed to create pedestrian, bicycle and Amtrak passenger access beneath the railroad tracks at Uptown Station.
The more than $35.1 million apparent low bid is nearly three times higher than the $13 million estimate of the cost of the underpass back in 2017. Since then, of course, there has been a pandemic, a workforce shortage, significant inflation, and a further escalation of construction costs, in particular, because of supply chain-caused shortages of materials.
"Certainly, it has been a long process. We've been at it for a little over a decade, I think, since the project was first conceived as an overpass, and now an underpass. We're excited to get to this point," said Otto.
Some elected officials have quietly expressed concern there would be sticker shock when the bids were formalized. Otto declined to give an initial reaction to the proposals.
"I can't speak to the numbers right now. We need to look at the bids and analyze those," he said.
In the past, Mayor Chris Koos has noted there are not very many firms that can tackle a project like the underpass which requires the rail line to stay in service during most of construction. Scarcity of expertise can command a higher price.
Is Otto satisfied with two bidders? Had he hoped for more interest to establish a ballpark range that can sometimes show whether the estimates are what's called "responsible bids," a true picture of the cost?
"Certainly, two bidders is always an excellent thing so we don't have to wonder. I think having two bidders is a good thing, yes," said Otto.
The town has lined up significant grant money to offset some of the cost — at least $16 million from the federal government and additional funding from the state. The town has already looked to the feds once for extra money to offset inflation. They got $3 million from that ask. It's possible the town could ask again, though a new administration could complicate that approach.
Transportation funding was supposed to be a prominent issue in Springfield during the upcoming session, but the state also is facing a $3.2 billion budget hole it needs to close.
Regardless of how the bid analysis goes and whether there might be extra grant money available, the underpass proposal is likely to do the same thing it did four years ago — figure prominently as an issue in next April's municipal election.
