$210,000 added to price tag for $33M East High

By Harold Gwin

The company had originally requested $455,000 in additional compensation.

YOUNGSTOWN — The price tag for the $33 million East High School just went up an additional $210,000.

That’s the cost of a change order recently approved by the city school board on a contract that was completed before the school opened to some 1,200 students in the fall of 2007.

Tony DeNiro, assistant superintendent for school business affairs, said the change order request for additional compensation came from Welty Building Co. Ltd. of Akron, which had the general trades contract for the school construction project.

East High School is part of Youngstown’s 14-school, $190 million rebuilding program now nearing completion. The Ohio School Facilities Commission is picking up about 80 percent of the program cost, including the Welty change order.

The company said it incurred additional expenses caused by delays in heating and utilities work for which it wasn’t responsible and for additional on-site security required by overall delays in completing the project, DeNiro said.

The building was to be done in December 2006 but actually wasn’t finished until June 2007, he said.

East is a very unique structure, DeNiro said. It’s a three-story structure literally built into the side of a hill at Parker Street and Bennington Avenue. Entry to the building is actually through the ground-level top floor. It took longer to build than originally estimated, he said.

Welty initially asked for $455,000 in additional compensation but negotiations between the company and the state resulted in the number being reduced to $210,000, DeNiro said.

The original contract for Welty was $15,796,000.

The school board also has approved a $342,593 contract with Tom Sexton & Associates of Walton, Ky., for furniture, fixtures and equipment for the new Volney Rogers Middle School slated to open this fall.

The company was the lowest of six bidders on the work.

It was the second time the district put the package out to bid.

It initially tried to do a joint bid with furniture and fixtures for the new Wilson Middle School also under construction, hoping to save some money by offering a larger overall contract, but the joint package came in well above architectural estimates.

Costs had been projected at $272,000 for each building, but the bids came in at about $400,000 each in December.

DeNiro said the district learned that companies interested in the joint package apparently bid intentionally high because, although Volney Rogers is due to open this fall, Wilson won’t open until fall 2010 and they didn’t want to be held to current prices a year from now.

The school board scrapped all bids and decided to bid the two buildings separately, opting to move first on Volney Rogers with a revised cost estimate of $330,000.

DeNiro said the low bidder was close enough to that number to be awarded the contract.

The Wilson package will go back out for bids probably this summer, he said.

gwin@vindy.com