Taft Center contract to be awarded soon

The agency received six proposals for the project.
By DAVID SKOLNICK
CITY HALL REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- A downtown property redevelopment agency expects to award a contract to design and construct the Taft Technology Center by the end of the month.
The Youngstown Central Area Community Improvement Corp. opened six proposals Wednesday for the project.
CIC staff will examine each of the proposals to make sure they comply with the project's specifications, said Reid Dulberger, the Regional Chamber's executive vice president. The chamber oversees the CIC.
The full CIC board will next meet Tuesday. A staff recommendation won't be ready by then, but one should be made before April ends, Dulberger said.
"We haven't gone through each of the documents, but from a dollar-and-cents perspective, we have a winner," he said Wednesday after opening the proposals.
The CIC received six proposals in February to design and build the proposed three-story, 30,000-square-foot high-technology center. But the board threw out all six because of problems with the proposals or because they were too expensive.
The CIC received about 5.9 million in state and federal money for the project. It has about 4.5 million left for the design and construction phase, Dulberger said.
The apparent low base proposal of 3,738,733 came from Mike Coates Construction Co. of Niles and Ricciuti Balog & amp; Partners of Youngstown.
The five other proposals are:
* 4,115,000, Murphy Contracting Co. and Olsavsky-Jaminet Architects, both of Youngstown.
* 4,129,000, Hivley Construction Co. of Canfield and Ronald Cornell Faniro Architects Inc. of Youngstown.
* 4,484,453, B & amp;B Contractors & amp; Developers and Strollo Architects, both of Youngstown.
* 5.04 million, Jance & amp; Co. Inc. of Mentor and Hengst Streff Bajko Architects of Cleveland.
* 5,194,800, Hudson Construction Co. of Brookfield and Eckles Architecture of Canfield.
What happened
The CIC changed the project's specifications to reduce the cost after the first round of proposals were rejected, Dulberger said. The changes cut the project's cost by about 800,000.
The two major changes, Dulberger said, were the elimination of office furniture to be provided by the contractor that received the contract and a different wiring system for the building.
"We had a too-complicated system that added a considerable amount of cost with no additional value," he said.
The center, named after ex-Gov. Bob Taft, is expected to be completed by March 15, 2008. The center is to be built on West Federal Street between the Youngstown Business Incubator and the vacant Semple Building, just east of the Home Savings and Loan building.
skolnick@vindy.com