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B&B Contractors hired to do work at Exal site
By DAVID SKOLNICK
Youngstown will start six road- improvement projects at the end of the month. The projects are:
Resurfacing Poland Avenue from Center Street to Walton Avenue.
Resurfacing and installing new traffic signals on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard from Fifth to Belmont avenues.
Resurfacing Market Street between Front and Federal streets.
Installing new storm sewers on Youngstown-Hubbard Road from County Line Road 500 feet south.
Resurfacing Teamster Drive from West Federal Street to the dead end, about 1,000 feet west.
Resurfacing, replacing storm sewers and installing new curbs on Old Furnace Road in Mill Creek MetroParks from Pioneer Pavilion to Park Drive.
Source: Youngstown Public Works Department
YOUNGSTOWN
The city hired a company for $2.07 million to build a road and install utility lines at the potential site of an Exal Corp. expansion.
The board of control selected B&B Contractors and Developers of Youngstown at its Thursday meeting for the work at a 61-acre site at the city-owned Salt Springs Business Park.
B&B had the least-expensive proposal, $2,067,631, among eight companies that sought the work.
The work will start in a month to six weeks and take up to six months to finish, said Charles Shasho, the city’s deputy public-works director.
Exal has considered a $44 million expansion project there for close to two years but hasn’t made a final decision. Exal, which makes aluminum cans and bottles, has two plants at the city’s Performance Place Business Park on Poland Avenue.
The city purchased the Salt Springs Business Park land for $1.4 million in April 2009 from LaFarge North America Inc., which used the property for several years to mine slag.
The city received all of the funding for the improvement work and the property purchase from the state’s Job Ready Sites program in 2009.
If the Exal expansion doesn’t work, the city has other options for the land, said Sarah Lown, the city’s development incentive director.
Also Thursday, the board of control hired Shelly & Sands, a Zanesville company, for $986,623.50 to resurface five streets and install new storm sewers on Youngstown- Hubbard Road, a location that has had flooding problems, Shasho said.
The other streets include portions of Poland Avenue, Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Market Street, Teamster Drive and Old Furnace Road.
Shelly & Sands submitted the least-expensive proposal among four companies vying to do the project.
An Ohio Public Works Commission grant will pay 69 percent of the cost with the rest coming from the city’s wastewater budget and its vehicle license-fee fund, Shasho said.
The work will start at the end of this month and take up to 120 days to be done, he said.