A project nearly two years in the works has hit another delay.
Earlier this year the Union County Commissioners solicited bids for a project to renovate the former Richwood Bank building, 249 W. Fifth St., and to expand the entranceway to the county justice center next door.
In addition to retrofitting the Richwood Bank and turning it into office space for the county prosecutor’s office the county wants to expand and reconfigure the lobby between the courthouse and the justice center as well as the public entry way on the south side of the buildings. The current public elevator will become a secure elevator for courthouse officials only. A public elevator and a staircase will be added to the north side of the justice center.
County Administrator Tim Hansley said bids for the project came back too high to be accepted. The architect estimated the project cost at $3.137 million. The county received just three bids — two for $4 million and one a $3.785 million.
By law, the county cannot accept a bid that is more than 10 percent higher than the architect’s estimate
Hansley said that with all the growth in the region, this is a bad time to be going to bid.
“It is really just market conditions,” Hansley said. “They have so much work already and we are just far enough outside Columbus, they don’t really want the work. So if they are going to take the job, they want to get paid a premium to do it.”
Hansley said the county has few options. He said parts of the project could be eliminated, parts could be bid separately or the architect could look at the project in light of the market conditions and formulate a new estimate.
Hansley said the project was already “bare bones” so there wasn’t much that could be eliminated.
“There was nothing in the building we could take out,” Hansley said. “It was a pretty basic building. It was a rehab of a bank building.”
Hansley also explained there is a cost savings to bidding the two parts of the project as one.
“We knew that if bid them separately, we would have lost that savings,” Hansley said.
Letitia Rayl, assistant county administrator and budget officer, said the county had the architect look at the project and create a new estimate. Rayl said the new architect’s estimate is $3.8 million, meaning acceptable bids could go as high as $4.12 million. She said the county has borrowed $4 million for the project.
Hansley said he hopes to have the project out to bid by the end of the week,
“We are hoping that this round we will get more bids, more competitive bids,” Hansley said. “We had hoped last time to get more than three bidders.”
In 2017 the county commissioners announced they would build a three-story, 23,000 square foot addition to the southwest corner of the Justice Center in addition to renovating the Richwood Bank building.
While the price tag for that expansion was originally projected between $14.4 and $17.3 million, officials said it had grown to about $23 million. At that point, county officials decided to scale back fearing the expense of expanding would cut into the county’s operating funds.
“The project has not been canceled, it has just been put on hold, hopefully for a couple of years,” Hansley said in November.