Cost of razing Rayen is less
By Harold Gwin
Building demolition bids continue to come in well below cost estimates.
YOUNGSTOWN — The cost of building new schools continues to rise, but the expense of tearing down the old ones would appear to be a bargain.
The city school board has awarded a contract to raze The Rayen School building at a cost of only one-third of the demolition estimate prepared by engineers.
The school district had been told to expect a tab of $975,000 to tear down the old building constructed on Benita Avenue in 1922.
The board has hired ProQuality Land Development Inc. of Campbell to do the job for $345,600.
ProQuality, which has done other demolition work for the city schools, offered the lowest of 17 bids for the job. The highest was $1,750,000 from Dore & Associates of Bay City, Mich.
It was the second demolition deal the district received this year.
The former Woodrow Wilson High School on Gibson Street was torn down by Delphi Consulting Inc. of Houston, Pa., at a cost of $489,000. The engineering estimate on that job was $1.5 million.
Delphi offered the lowest of 14 bids on Wilson in January. The highest was $1.8 million by Empire Dismantlement Corp. of Grand Island, N.Y.
Both demolition projects are part of a $180 million, 14-building, school rebuilding program now under way in the Youngstown schools.
The Wilson site will be the home of a new Wilson Middle School, and school officials recently learned the cost of erecting a new building to house about 350 pupils in grades six through eight may be considerably higher than original estimates.
The original price tag was projected at $9.1 million but the latest version puts the cost at $12.4 million.
BHSM Architects offered the school board a number of factors for the increase, most notably the board’s decision to add about 2,000 square feet of common gathering space to the building and to change some roof designs.
Another factor is that the cost of construction materials has risen significantly since the original budget was proposed in 2004, according to BHSM.
The Wilson Middle School project is now in the construction design stage.
The high price of salvaged material from demolition projects is believed to be a significant factor in Youngstown securing lower-than-anticipated bids.
Steve Ludwinski, senior project manager for Heery International, the district’s construction manager for the rebuilding program, said salvage plays a major factor in how a company bids.
Contractors have been able to get a good price for salvaging metals from the buildings, and the crushed concrete from the Wilson job was sold for recycling as part of a green environmental program to reduce landfill waste, he said.
“The deals we are getting are very good,” said Tony DeNiro, assistant superintendent for school business affairs.
The good deals are expected to continue as the board prepares to award a contract for the demolition of the former Martin Luther King Jr. School on Covington Street tonight. DeNiro said the estimate on the job was $450,000, but the low bid appears to be at just $72,000.
The district had proposed building a Rayen Middle School at the Benita Avenue site of the old high school at a projected cost of $7.2 million, but that plan may change.
The district is talking with the Ohio School Facilities Commission, which is picking up about 80 percent of the rebuilding program cost, about Rayen, and school officials have said the new school may be built as an addition to Harding Elementary School on Cordova Avenue, which is adjacent to the Benita Avenue location. Costs are a factor in that debate.
Harding was one of the first buildings replaced about four years ago.
Rayen would house grades six through eight if built as a free-standing facility but would become part of a K-8 building if erected as an addition to Harding.
gwin@vindy.com