Financial issues continue to plague the city's airport terminal project plans
The Nevada Airport Board has about $399,000 to spend for new hangar and office at the Municipal Airport, unfortunately, no one seems to be able to build this facility for that amount of money. And a lot of other government projects around the state are running into the same problem.
"I talked to the CDBG people and they said that everything has been coming in above the bid estimates," Mark Mitchell, project manager, told the airport board during a special meeting at noon Monday.
Mitchell told the board that there is another $600,000 available from a STAR loan the city has secured for work at the airport. However, unlike the CDBG funds, this money would have to be repaid.
This is the second time the bids for the project have come above the bid estimates, however, this time the board voted to recommend that the city council accept the low bid of $437,773 for a building with a finished office and an empty hangar from Sprouls and use money from the STAR loan to make up the difference. The board is also going to pursue additional money from local industries that use the airport to repay the loan money and the Richardson Foundation.
After the first group of bids came in well above the estimates the board cut back on the project and divided it into a base project of just the finished office and hangar plus three options for less necessary items like heaters in the hangar building, a floor drain in the hangar and some trim around the office.
"I talked to the architect this morning and he said that we can redraw it," Mitchell said.
He told the board that Chris Bell, the architect for the project, said that he did not see how it could be scaled back without making the hangar smaller, plus bidding it a third time would probably not get any lower bids. Doing so would only eliminate some of the bidders because most companies will not submit bids a third time for the same project.
"You've got a pretty bare bones building now. I don't know what else you could take out," Randy Marti, human resources director, told the board.
Jody Bryson, airport manager, said the hangar was intended to be large enough for Murphy Family Farm's plane.
"To make it smaller, would limit its use. We hoped this might help attract an industry with a corporate jet needing this size of a hangar" he said.
Another option would be to drop the hangar and go back to the original idea of just building an office, Mitchell said.
"That removes the rental income," Monte Curtis, airport board chairman, said.