Longmeadow puts DPW feasibility study and design out to bid

Date: 2/19/2015

LONGMEADOW – The town has gone out to bid for a consulting and designer service company to complete a feasibility study and schematic design for a potential new Department of Public Works (DPW) facility.

Town Manager Stephen Crane told Reminder Publications the town would receive the bids on Feb. 26.

The study and design will focus on developing a preliminary design, completing a site analysis, and examining operational programming, he added.

A total of $250,000 was approved during the Nov. 18 Special Town Meeting for the feasibility study and schematic design.

“Additionally, we did make a site visit to the town of Westford, which is in Eastern Massachusetts to view [their] relatively new [DPW] facility,” Crane said. “And so we wanted to go see what process they went through to get their facility funded, designed, and now how it works, [and the] lessons they’ve learned.”

Crane noted that Westford DPW officials emphasized that core components such as adequate storage for vehicles and equipment, preferably in enclosed areas, are needed for a highly functional DPW facility.

Enclosed areas extend the life of vehicles, he explained. Currently, almost all of the town’s DPW vehicles are constantly exposed to the elements by not having enclosed areas. An enclosed space allows DPW workers to wash salt off the trucks during and after snow operations.

The town has individual garages at the DPW facility without doors on them because the trucks can’t fit in the areas with the doors on, Crane said. The vehicle wash area is located outside and is basically “an ice rink.”

A modern facility for repairs is another core component, he added. “It’s a 1930s building that’s collapsing and you can’t even fit our biggest and most expensive piece of equipment in it.” 

Crane said another lesson he learned from visiting Westford was to plan for possible growth in the department because “it’s much less expensive to build it the first time than it is to add it on later.” 

“I also learned that they had established a citizen permanent committee; basically like a Capital Planning Committee but focusing on buildings and that is a policy recommendation that I have made to the Select Board that Longmeadow should establish a similar committee to work on this building or possibly a new senior center,” he added.

In other business, Vermont Recreational was awarded the contract for the Blinn Tennis Courts project after submitting a bid of $792,000.

“We’ve signed a contract and my belief is that they’ll start the project as soon as the high school tennis team season is over,” Crane said. 

Vermont Recreational was chosen because they were “the lowest responsible bid” and is recognized as “a tennis court specialist,” he added. Vermont Recreational is anticipated to complete the project sometime this fall.

The bad was lower than the project’s proposed budget of $875,000 and the initial?$832,690 bid received in August 2014 from Mountain View Landscapes.

After an initial budget of $675,000 proved too small, a $200,000 transfer of additional funding was approved at the Nov. 18, 2014 Special Town Meeting.

During the first round of bids in August 2014, two bids came in, Crane said. When the project went out to bid for its second time, six bids came in.

A condensed time, a fewer number of bids, and construction projects already taking place in other communities were elements that accounted for the higher bid last summer, he noted.

“We thought, ‘If we went out to bid over the winter when the contest core builders aren’t in the process of building tennis courts, we would probably get more competition and save money,’” Crane added. “And those two things did happen.”

Town Engineer Yem Lip stated in a report to Crane from Aug. 29, 2014, that the project entails the construction of 12 new tennis courts with surface coating and equipment, 9,100 square yards of fine grading, 1,900 tons of asphalt court surface, 1,600 feet of 10 foot-high black vinyl coated chain link fence with pedestrian and utility gates, and tennis court lighting.