SCOTT CITY -- Commissioners of the Southeast Missouri Regional Port Authority have taken under advisement bids that were received last week for the first phase of construction of a rail spur into the port.
CWR Construction Co. of North Little Rock, Ark., was the apparent low bidder on the project, with a figure of $1,675,767. That was about $75,000 less than the next lowest bid of Potashnick Construction Co. of Cape Girardeau, at $1,746,211.
"I could not see anything out of line with their bid," Jim Lawson of the Bowen and Lawson engineering firm of Jackson, which designed the project, said of the apparent low bid.
Lawson told the board he had estimated the cost at $1.6-to-$1.8 million, so the figure is about what they had expected.
"It's a responsive bid," commented Morty Potashnick, chairman of the board of commissioners. He said the board would discuss it more in executive session and had 120 days to award a contract.
Executive Director Allan Maki said there were some problems that still needed to be worked out before work could begin, including some right-of-way acquisition.
The first phase of the project is for dirt work and installing culverts; the second phase will be actual installation of the rail line.
Maki pointed out that CWR has not done any work in the area before and he had asked Lawson to get some additional information on the firm.
Lawson said he had talked to CWR's bonding company and it had indicated a willingness to bond any single project up to $30 million. The company has also satisfactorily done work for the federal government, including the Army Corps of Engineers, he said.
Last year it completed $20 million worth of work.
Lawson said the company's owner, Charles Richardson, is willing to start work as soon as a contract is signed.
The third lowest bid came from Kolb Construction of St. Charles, with a figure of $1,898,916.
The highest of the bids was from Bloomsdale Excavating, $2,880,174.30.
Maki said there was quite a variance in bids, with a "$1,120,000 swing between the low and high bid."
During the month of January, Maki reported that 4,172 tons was unloaded at the port. He said the tonnage was quite high for the first month of the year, which is generally slow.
Maki's report showed that 1,493 tons of salt, 1,175 tons of dap (a type of fertilizer), 833 tons of potash, and 671 tons of wet soybeans were unloaded at the public dock.
In other business, the board authorized Maki to purchase a vehicle to use for port authority business. He presented bids from car dealers in Cape and Scott County to the board Monday and was told he could pick from the two lowest bids.
During the open session, no mention was made of efforts to resolve a lawsuit with West Lake Quarry over attempts by the port to purchase land from West Lake that it is presently leasing.
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