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Final contracts approved for expo center

By Kevin Boneske
Staff Writer


ASHWAUBENON – A final series of bids for constructing the new expo center received approval Tuesday, Jan. 14, from the village’s Community Development Authority.

Reinhold’s signage bid of $268,828 was awarded as the lowest of four submitted.

Ben Samolinski, project manager from Miron, said the bid includes items such as plaza signage, directional signage or interior directories.

Johnson Terrazzo was awarded the epoxy matrix terrazzo bid of $538,500, which was the lower of two bids submitted.

“Ben did a ton of work on this,” said Village Manager Allison Swanson. “We explored fewer different colors in it, other different materials, a whole different array of things, so that’s why this is just coming through now. This was actually bid back in October, but we were potentially going to change materials and try to find some cost savings. But ultimately this is a pretty good price overall, the quality of the material that it actually is, so we’re going to stick with that.”

The landscaping bid was awarded to Schmalz for $369,575, which was the lowest complete bid of two submitted.
Two other bids were found incomplete and subsequently rejected.

Swanson said there will likely be change orders to the landscaping to possibly eliminate things, though Schmalz would remain the low bidder.

The fencing bid was awarded to Fortress Fence for $192,644, which was the lower of two bids submitted.
Swanson said the type of fencing could be changed to lower costs.

“It’s one of those (items) where they have not ordered it yet, while we continue to work through budget and contingency funds and that type of thing,” she said.

Samolinski said the fencing could be changed from an ornamental design to a black, vinyl chain-link application.
“That’s one of the options on the table, which would save us a fair amount of money that way,” he said.

The only bid submitted for site earthwork was approved from Ostrenga Excavating for $597,636.

“This is for all the earthwork outside the footprint of the building,” Samolinski said. “So, this would be for all the grading for the parking lots, the plaza, digging for all the foundation walls for the plaza work.”

Swanson said Ostrenga is already on the project site.

The CDA rejected tile bids it received in October after the tile material for the expo center was changed from stone to marble.

“It will be a large format tile, and it will be marble instead of stone, but the look will be relatively the same,” Samolinski said.

He said the material price for marble tile is about a third of the cost for stone.

After being rebid to change from stone to marble, H.J. Martin was awarded the tile bid of $463,600, which was the lowest of three bids submitted.

Expo center construction

Construction has been underway since last summer on the expo center.

It is being built where the Brown County Veterans Memorial Arena, Shopko Hall and former Packers Hall of Fame were demolished at the southeast corner of Lombardi Avenue and Oneida Street.

Swanson said the project is “essentially within budget.”

“Right now, we’re sitting pretty good,” she said. “Barring any disasters, this is the last of the bids to be awarded. There’s a contingency there in place that Miron is comfortable with to get us to the end of the project.”

Samolinski said a change order would be presented to the CDA if the overall cost exceeds $86.2 million.

“If we would exceed it, then you’d see a change order, but most likely you will never see a change order because we will be under that dollar amount,” he said. “So you’ll never see a change order, unless we get to the end of the project, and there’s some funds left to spend, then you’d see a change order deduct.”

The expo center has a total budget of $93 million.

The funds to pay for the project include $4.5 million from the stadium tax refund, $8 million in naming rights, $15 million coming from the new half-percent county sales tax and the bulk of the funds coming from room tax dollars.

The project is being designed with more than 120,000 square feet of usable space and will connect to the Resch Center.

It has a targeted completion date of January 2021.

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