Mineola Board of Ed Awards Contracts for Hampton Project

Mineola residents living along Colonial Avenue may have noticed the green construction fencing that has gone up around the north side of the .

After a delay of about 14 days, the awarded the bids for the various types of construction for the to several firms, all of which had met with the district architect and director of facilities and been recommended by the former, at the December 1 meeting.

“In all these instances these are their recommendations for who the award should go to, happily,” superintendent Dr. Michael Nagler said.

The 5,500 sq. ft. construction project would include a janitor’s closet, handicapped accessible bathroom, a 750 sq. ft music room, a 900 sq. ft. art room and two 150 sq. ft. resource rooms looking out to the field and an additional electrical closet. A glass wall would act as a partition between the library and computer room. The projected time for the construction to be completed is about 8 months.

The board had originally , which was based on recommendation of district architectural firm of Holzmacher, McLendon & Murrell. The district had bid out work for four areas of the new construction: plumbing, electric, HVAC and general contracting which includes cement, steel, finish work, masonry and painting.

The district opened the original bids on November 16, receiving four different bids for the general contractor but the bid amounts varied wildly according to the superintendent.

The new bids were opened on November 29 and “as we suspected, we had a lot more numbers closer in scope,” Dr. Nagler said, noting that the previous low-bidder was no longer the lowest amount and a tie existed for the $1.375 million base amount, “which is fairly unheard of.”

According to district counsel, in the event of a tie in bids – while not unheard of but still rare – state statutes allow the district to choose the vendor.

District architects and facilities director Dan Romano interviewed the companies, recommending VRD Contracting, to which board president Christine Napolitano introduced a resolution at the meeting awarding the firm the contract for general and site work for the project.

The other contracts and the amounts awarded are as follows: plumbing: Conelly & Sons ($68,300 base bid plus one alternate of $5,800 totaling $74,100); electric: LEB Electric ($275,000); heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC): JNS Heating ($277,000).

The district had calculated the total cost of the project to be $2,129,650, with bids coming in about $128,000 under that amount according to the superintendent “so we will be able to buy furniture for the library.” None of the bids included furniture.

A meeting was held with all the contractors the week of December 5 and “we’re ready to go, they’re ready to go,” Dr. Nagler said. “Overall we’re very pleased with the results, we had a very competitive bid and we got some very good prices and we’re ready to start this work ASAP and make sure we have it for September.”