Pacts OK’d for schools’ $50M project

By Elise Franco | February 14, 2012 at 12:03a.m.

Austintown

Ground will be broken before the end of this month on the $50 million Austintown schools project, now that the board of education has approved seven construction contracts.

The board approved contracts Monday for the lowest bidders:

Hudson Group Inc.: general trades, $17,736,350.

Boak and Sons Inc.: roofing, $1,396,400.

Commercial Appliance Contracts Inc.: food-service equipment, $779,462.

RNL Fire Systems LLC: fire protection, $299,000.

Antenucci Inc.: plumbing, $1.95 million; and heating, ventilation and air conditioning, $5,391,250.

W.T. Leone’s Tri-Area Electric Co. Inc.: electricity, $5,315,480.

Superintendent Vince Colaluca said now that the contracts are approved, digging likely will commence next week.

“Now we can start the digging and laying the plumbing pipes,” Colaluca said. “From this point, every phase will start moving along.”

The Ohio School Facilities Commission is paying for $27 million of the $50 million project to build two new elementary buildings on the current schools campus off Idaho Road: a kindergarten-through-second-grade building and a third-through-fifth-grade facility.

The district passed a 2.9-mill bond issue in May 2010 to raise the remaining $23 million.

Robert McAuliffe, senior manager for Hammond Construction, which is overseeing the project, said he and other board members went through an extensive verification process after bids were opened in January.

“We met with each contractor and went through item by item within their summary of work,” he said during a Monday afternoon work session.

The new buildings will be built on empty land behind the current Watson Elementary and Frank Ohl Intermediate schools, which will be demolished as one of the last steps in the project set for completion in September 2013.

“The community has been waiting to see dirt moved, but the on-paper planning takes time,” Colaluca said. “The time to build is here now, and this is something our kids and the community deserves, so we’re very pleased.”