Bids Come in Over Budget for Fargo City Hall

After opening up bids for the possible construction on a new city hall, officials found they have a lot to talk about.

The lowest offers were from general contractor Meinecke-Johnson Co., Grant’s Mechanical, Inc., and Scott’s Electric.

All together, those bids were still three million dollars over the anticipated budget.

“31 million 148 thousand, 713 dollars, that’s staggering. That’s such a large number,” said Fargo city commissioner, Dave Piepkorn.

“Well it’s a disappointment. It’s 10 percent higher than we had wanted. What we will do at this time is work with the architect and our engineering staff and our team to figure out where we can save some money,” added Fargo Mayor Tim Mahoney.

Bids were separated into three categories: general construction, mechanics, and electrical.

General contractor bids range from $21 to 23 million, mechanical bids range from $5 to 6 million, and electrical bids range from $3 to 4 million.

“We’re in a competitive construction market, especially with the two hospitals being built right now. That has driven some prices up,” said Terry Stroh, President of T. L. Stroh Architects, Ltd.

Mayor Tim Mahoney says a lot of the extra costs come from site preparation because they’re building along the river and that means steel beams are needed to build a deeper foundation.

Some officials are saying that moving the location of city hall could save a lot of money and help with budgeting problems.

“What I would like to see us do is to look at acquiring one of the buildings in downtown Fargo and re-purposing it,” said Piepkorn.

But others disagree.

“If you move it somewhere else and something commercially comes in here they’re going to have to pay for those costs and for the city to do that on their own land is probably the wisest thing,” said Mahoney.

Soft, clay soil isn’t the only factor draining money from the budget.

“The other thing we’re doing a lot of at this site is kind of going the extra mile to make sure the city hall is flood proof and those kinds of things so there’s some issues there that probably costs us some dollars,” said Stroh.

Over all, costs have gone up in the mechanical and electrical fields, also contributing to the high bids.

Both Mahoney and Stroh say one of the first cost efficient changes they can make would be cutting out the 590 thousand dollar geothermal heating and cooling system.

The next step will be to present this to the full commission.

Mahoney says they have to have a plan in place by March 30th.