Petersburg Pilot -

The Petersburg Borough Assembly unanimously approved a $6,639,300 municipal building remodel project bid award to McG Constructors/DCI Joint Venture.

The bid included one alternate, a $213,000 south parking lot, that the Borough Assembly removed from the project with the understanding they could include it later.

MRV Architects’ Corey Wall answered questions regarding the need for the parking.

“The main reason for the south parking lot alternate was to reorient the exit out onto Nordic Drive further south so that it lines directly up with Birch Street so an emergency vehicle or a police vehicle quickly trying to get onto Nordic has a better view north around the corner of the building,” MRV Architects Corey Wall said.

Petersburg Police Chief Kelly Swihart said he’d like to see the alternate included because of the difficulty of seeing oncoming traffic in the current conditions.

“The short answer is we would love to have it but we could live without it if we absolutely have to,” Swihart said.

Wall also outlined the importance of having a construction administrator on-site.

“You really just need to count up the people and make sure they’re working,” Wall said. “That saves us from if we get into a dispute later on then we can go back and say ‘yeah you’re not done with the project but you guys took two weeks off to go moose hunting or whatever,’ that we have a record of who’s on the project, who’s working.”

The project’s current budget allocated $180,000 for such a task, an amount of money paid out to a similar administrator for 12 months during the Petersburg Public Library’s construction.

Wall also said that contract also paid per diem because they brought in someone from outside Petersburg to work with the library construction process.

“$180,000 for a 12 month contract seemed more than generous to us for that kind of participation, but then what we found was there just wasn’t anybody in Petersburg that was willing to take a year out of their normal practice to do this and so then we were paying per diem,” Wall said.

The assembly members agreed an on-site administrator was a necessity but were undecided as how to progress.

“We can throw it out to the community and see if there’s somebody out there,” Borough Manager Steve Giesbrecht said. “We have not done that up to this point. We may have somebody that’s very capable that’s willing to do it and for what we have budgeted or less.”

The remodel is set to begin April 30. In the meantime, borough staff will soon begin moving into the Petersburg Indian Association building.

When the project is in full swing, Borough Assembly and other municipal meetings will be held in the PIA boardroom.