$2.3-million Phase Two to service airport lands sent out to tender
By Castlegar Source
The City of Castlegar is putting out an early tender for the roughly $2.3-million Phase Two of the airport-lands-servicing project, after an unanimous vote at council’s regular meeting Monday evening.
“This is where we connect the pipe (recently installed spanning Kinnaird bridge during Phase One) at either end – on one end to the city’s water/sewer systems, and on the other to the airport, Doukhobor Discover Centre, Kootenay Art Gallery, etc.,” said city councillor and co-chair of the Transportation and Civic Works committee Russ Hearne. He said it’s unusual, but hardly unheard of, for a municipality to put such a project out to tender before completing the year’s budget process. “It’s certainly been done before,” he said. “Because this is such a large project, we want to get it out there while companies are still planning their year. We feel there will be a cost-savings realized by that, because there will be more companies available to bid on the project.” Hearne said putting the job out to tender doesn’t lock the city in to anything – they’ll be forwarding the budget process as bids come in, and if costs appear unmanageable, they can still re-evaluate later on. This is the final phase of the airport-land-servicing project, but there will still be work out there to complete, such as creating a water storage facility to increase the city’s capacity. The city has applied for grant funding to offset some of the expense of servicing the land.
