By: Donovan W. Mann – donovanm@977thebolt.com
Dakota City, IA – the Board of Supervisors approves the contract for a bridge replacement project on Virginia Avenue.
On Monday, March 2, County Engineer Ben Loots presented to the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors the contract details on a bid price for a bridge replacement project. The contract had to be approved by the Board of Supervisors before it can be signed.
Loots says “this is a replacement of an early 1900s pony truss bridge on Virginia avenue, about three-quarters of a mile south of the county line. We are looking at replacing it with a 120 foot by 24 foot wide concrete slab Bridge”. The 24 foot wide replacement bridge will be wider than the current pony truss which is about 17 feet wide.
Loots says “we had three bids on the contract. Merryman Bridge was low bidder at roughly $393,000 and they’d like to begin construction as soon as we can get all the contracts and everything signed”. Merryman Bridge Constitution Co. is a contractor out of Algona and Loots says that the county has a great working relationship with them.
The two other companies that placed bid prices in for the contract were Graves Constructions Co Inc. out of Spencer and Cunningham-Reis LLC out of Van Meter. According to Loots both these contract bids were significantly high cost, factors included distances from Humboldt and how much work is currently being done by the contractors. He says that if he had not received the Merryman bid he would have still rejected the other two offers.
Merryman Bridges offer was approved by the Board of Supervisors for a total of $393,213.65. The motion was made by Rick Pedersen and seconded by Sandy Loney. The Board’s decision was unanimous.