The general and subcontractors for the project to convert a warehouse into the new town justice building on North Putt Corners Road in New Paltz have been selected. This project will bring court and police under the same roof for the first time since then-supervisor Toni Hokanson locked the town into a multi-year lease to resolve decades-old space issues at the Plattekill Avenue police headquarters. It will also be an opportunity to have a courthouse which complies with all current safety standards put out for justice courts.
Matt Eyler, the consultant who has been overseeing the entire process, praised the work of Luis Rodriguez and the Palumbo Group — hired as construction manager — in soliciting bids. “The key to getting good bids is to make sure that the bid documents are crystal-clear to the bidder,” Eyler said, because ambiguity leads to padding by the bidders to guard against uncertainty. The other criterion of a successful bidding process, Eyler added, is a large number of bidders. Palumbo employees “were pounding the phones for weeks” to solicit bids from as many contractors as possible, and that effort paid off. The goal was to secure a minimum of five bids for each of the five types of proposals requested, one for the general contract and others for the several subcontracts. The actual numbers were much higher: 16 bids on the general contract, 10 electrical, 11 plumbing, 16 for the mechanical work including heat and cooling systems, and 14 for the site work, 67 bids in total.
More than $4,000,000 in contracts were awarded at the November 19 town council meeting. When council members agreed on May 17, 2019 to purchase the property for $1,325,000, they estimated that the total cost of this project to be $6,330,000; in that same resolution, they committed to spending no more than $8,000,000. The project is being funded by a bond secured at an interest rate of 1.61%, which was secured in September because of the unusually low rates that will save taxpayers an estimated $1.8 million in interest that would have been paid at the 3.5%, which was the highest rate that had been expected.
The various contractors must complete individual contracts and provide insurance documents before work can begin, Eyler said.
After learning that the water on the site was not suitable, town council members have now started the process to get water district one extended to include this property. That will involve a formal request to the village board, and Mayor Tim Rogers has said that an opportunity to create a loop where water mains now have dead ends is desirable, as it tends to correct issues with low pressure and rust-colored turbidity. An unrelated request to include a nearby property, the site of the Trans-Hudson Management project adjacent to Route 299 and the Thruway, is also expected to be passed on to the village board by the town council.
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