By BRANDON L. SUMMERS
The Iowa Central Community College board of directors approved bids Thursday for its new food service facility.
Sande Construction, of Humboldt, provided the lowest submitted base bid out of six at $6,904,447. With options, the construction cost will total $6,908,089.
"We had all the same bidders that bid last time," Dan Kinney, Iowa Central president, said.
Of five submitted options, a bid for a cast stone exterior finish at $28,800 was deducted.
"We feel the majority of our buildings are brick, so we want to stick with the brick," Kinney said.
An alternate for light pole and fixtures east of the administration building at $28,587 was approved.
"This would be out in the courtyard, and we need that work. It gets really dark out there. It's a safety issue," Kinney said. "We'll be putting in all new lighting that will match."
The bid from Sande Construction was approved by the board unanimously.
In addition, the board received a bid of $864,960 for kitchen equipment and the furnishing of the new facility.
"That came in tremendously much lower than we had predicted," Kinney said.
Kitchen equipment represented one area of cost savings on the project, he said.
"We've had quite a bit of cost savings, but we did some cutting, too. The original was having all new equipment. But we had a lot of equipment over there that was in good shape. That's what's helped us reduce the cost of this overall project too," he said.
The cost for Woodman Controls, which is utilized for all campus buildings, Kinney said, came in at $217,600, and the systems works commissioning at $32,500.
The additional cost of $1,050,016 was approved unanimously by the board. According to Mark Crimmins, board president, this brings the total cost of the construction project to $8,023,105.
An $8.4 million budget for the project was approved by the board in July 2011. According to Tom Beneke, vice president of enrollment management and student services, the new cafeteria was needed in response to increasing student enrollment. The college had more than 1,200 on-campus students during its 2011-2012 academic year. The new facility will serve 500 students at a time.
In April, the board of directors, in a special meeting, rejected all bids for the new facility as they exceeded the project's budget. The lowest bid at the time, also from Sande, came in at $9,498,700, more than $2.5 million over the board's estimate.
The new total bids came in at $1.4 million less than the previous ones, Kinney said. The amount approved Thursday was still slightly over budget.
"We're about $400,000 higher than we wanted our original budget to be, in our guesstimate," he said.
The project will be paid for through revenue bonds that have already been passed and capital loan notes, as well as from a gift to the college from Great Western Dining.
According to Kinney, the project could begin construction today and is scheduled to be completed by July 2013.
"It'll be a nice building," he said.