The City of Winchester has nearly completed the first phase of its pool renovation. Greg Hillis, of Benton & Associates said that electrical work by Scott Brothers Electric and piping and plumbing for the filter house by Doyle Plumbing & Heating were nearly 90% complete. Hillis told the Winchester City Council that approximately $27,600 worth of the project is left to complete.
Hillis told the council that bids opened last Friday for the bath house and pool liner in the next phase. The council voted to award a bid of $399,667 to Trotter General Contracting of Industry, Illinois for the construction. Hillis said they did an alternate bid process for the pool liner. Both bids for a new liner came in north of $71,000. Hillis and Mayor Rex McIntire said they were going to re-evaluate the pool liner portion of the project and hope to find a less expensive option, hoping to have a bid come in at $15,000-$20,000 cheaper.
McIntire says its been part of the process of piecing out bids in hopes of getting a better price. “I’ve worked construction 42 years out of my career, and 24 of that, my wife and I had our own company. I found that if you make these type of jobs a little smaller, there will be a lot more people that are able to bid on them, especially smaller contractors. I suggested to Benton & Associates that we do something like that. Greg told me tonight that we have saved approximately $160,000 on the two bids over what we had as one bid. They were pretty impressed with that.”
Hillis also outlined the city’s general Motor Fuel Tax maintenance schedule. The $63,000 schedule is set to be bid out by the Illinois Department of Transportation for oiling and chipping. The street next to the pool is one of the items in the maintenance schedule. McIntire says he hopes to have the road and the pool ready to go for a grand opening next Spring.