City Council - Parks and Recreation Committee

take a minute to catch up so we go ahead and turn this over to uh council member Williams who's the chair thank you president Hamill um we have one item on our agenda today which is agenda Bill 2436 I'm joined uh in our meeting today by council member Huffman and council member cotton and what we're going to be discussing is a contract award to Dawson Construction LLC for the blow Donovan Park improvements uh this project includes electrification of the blell Donovan Park Community Building as well as um storm water repairs uh mechanical and electrical upgrades and a roof replacement the existing mechanical systems will be replaced with high efficiency electrical units and electrical panels will be will be replaced with a new service connection to power new electrical vehicle charging stations the project improves Antiquated systems in the building and provides upgrades to meet the climate action objectives objectives of the city of Bellingham by removing Natural Gas building Building Systems the city publicly opened nine bids on February 21st 2024 Dawson construction is the responsible bidder who submitted the lowest responsive bid of $819,900 in including all bid all bid alternates and the acceptable sales or use tax the engineer uh the engineers estimate for this project was 1 million ion $110,000 and uh $1,773 so for further explanation I'm going to turn this over to Parks and Recreation director Nicole Oliver thank you council member Williams um good morning Council this

is a bid award that had a bit of a long story behind it and to tell a little bit of that story I have Gina Austin our project engineer and to uh explain a little bit the impacts we can expect this summer due to this project good morning here good morning I'm your Park project engineer Gina Austin and I'm also here to answer any technical questions but overview of the project this is our um second time rebidding this project uh we bid it last year and did not have any biders we went to into negotiations with contractors as we're allowed to do and we have no biders and we uh could not secure a contractor for the contract um last year was a very busy year for buildings and we don't have a lot of contractors available so we made the tough decision to hold this project one more year and rebid it again we had a much more favorable uh bidding climate as uh director Oliver said I think we had nine nine bids um so that that's that's a good thing um the slide that I'm showing right now on the screen is an aerial overview of the project to orient ourselves this is the blell Donovan uh community building parking lot and this is uh Electric Avenue where my pointer is the area in red with dashed lines shows the impact area of a majority of the construction in order to Electrify the building we need to bring in new electrical service and the cost for doing that at this point in time whether it's electrical that we need today or the electrical we might need in the future if we expanded the

building is about the same so we went ahead and are putting in a little bit additional capacity for future addition or remodel of this building should that ever happen we only want to be in this area once we do have to trench all the way out to Electric Avenue to bring in a new underground electrical line Transformer and systems this will also facilitate and provide capacity for new EV electric vehicle charging stations those are planned um at this site as well we did not have capacity for that without doing this work we will replace electrical um we will replace our hot water tank tanks our air handling units that are gas operated with electrical units that are high efficient and we will replace the roof and remove asbestos on the roof um that is essentially the project we will keep the boat ramp ramp open we will have flagging Services over the summer because because this project is located in the lake watom uh Watershed we are uh working in that window which is I think June 1 to September 30 that is also the busiest season for this park so we're going to take extra care with the contractor and make sure that we can get people moving around keep the restrooms open boat ramp open and allow people an accessible route to the water along the east side of the building that's overview of the project okay thank you very much um is there any discussion from the committee uh council member Huffman thank you um thanks for highlighting some of the potential impacts on the use and some

of the some of that medication but what is the the time frame that this work's going to be done uh work on the ground so digging holes anything like that would be June 1 through September 30 uh we will will that accounts for weather days we're hoping that the contractor will not be occupying this space the entire time but one thing we heard from the contractors the first time we bid this we had a lot of restrictions and they found those to be safety issues and very hard to bid so we're giving them a little bit more leeway here to get in work really quickly and leave we do plan to have the community building open and they can work um in that building after September 2nd they'll be able to close the building and do the non-ear work related um items but we are allowing them that time from June 1 to September 30 to do the work there is a a little bit of juggling here because Puget Sound Energy gives you a window and you take it when you get it they don't there's not a lot of scheduling around because everybody is working during that time so that's also that flexibility is to allow them to come in and when they say they're ready to work they're ready to work um we bid this early too so that we could start securing some of the long lead electrical um panels that are very hard to get so I think the the very long answer is we're going to work as soon as the equipment arrives and get in there and get out but we do we we just wanted to let the public know that we intermittently could

be in this site anytime from June 1 to September depending on when equipment arrives when PSC is ready to go and when uh we can get this all done thank you are uh council member Huffman thank you um and it sounds like need to close the building for a time period um programming that happens in that building will it be moved to another location or will it be canceled for that time period uh we are planning to um keep the day camps some of them will be running but we are going to run the most of our summer camps out of the new Cordata Pavilion and then bring kids down to the lake uh regularly to get some swim time in okay any further question questions council member Anderson thank you um for recognizing me I'm not on this particular committee uh I have some background in trail building and parks that was my my first career and one thing was always the path of least resistance is where the public is going to walk or the shortest distance between a and b and if um we're expecting people to go the kind of the East Side around the building in order to get to the swim area will we be having ambassadors or will they have flaggers or something set up that no walking on the roadway CU if people are parked closer to Electric the tendency is going to be just to walk up the road to get to the swim area and I I'm concerned that would be a um a hazard for safety and I'm wondering what I'm sure that's been identified what is the plan for that area to prevent that from happening I think it

will be a combination of signage um that that area all along electric is fully fenced and gated and we lock that gate during the summer to try and prevent people from jumping off the bridge so uh there will be flaggers though that'll be part of this but this will be fenced um that it will be completely blocked off from people cutting through the construction zone when they are actively in doing construction uh quick question I appreciate the fact that you're putting in Greater capacity for electrical service for future needs and also for EV charging my question is how many EV charging stations are planned and will there be electrical capacity to have further EV charging like say we're going to put in two stations now for four Chargers is there capacity electrically speaking for more in the future I think there is one um EV charging station planned here capacity wise we will have that for future Eevee if we electric vehicle charging stations for this site okay any further questions seeing none I'll entertain a motion to ahead and move approval thank you um any further discussion okay all in favor please say I I I all opposed the motion carries to approve and I will present that at the evening meeting uh uh this evening so the meeting is adjourned