Fernie City Council held a Special Meeting of Council on Sept. 20 where the first item on the agenda was the construction of public washrooms in Station Square.
Director of Leisure Services, Lloyd Smith, presented a report to council, detailing the proposals for construction. The City received five bids, ranging in value from $164,000 to $253,000.
Smith’s report recommended Council award the contract to Steeple Construction for a price of $232,190, inclusive of provincial sales tax.
“As part of the request for proposal process, they said it had to meet the downtown design guidelines. So all of the proposals went to the downtown design guideline committee and they deemed that the only one that met the downtown design guidelines was the one from Steeples,” Smith later told The Free Press. “They were the ones that decided that was the only one they were going to allow me to build.”
The bid price does exceed the original budget allocated to the project. The report suggested using funds from the Resort Municipality Initiative reserve funding.
“In order to fund the project to a maximum of $240,000, it is suggested that RMI resort development reserve funding in the amount of $100,000 be redirected to this project. This will require inclusion of this project in the 2016-2017 Resort Development Strategy, and will require consideration by the RMI working group,” read the report.
The bathrooms will be located in the lot adjacent to the Arts Station. Smith hopes the construction will be completed by the end of the year.
“It was approved, so we are pretty happy about that. We are hopefully going to get that done before the snow flies, which means we are going to move fast now,” he said.
Council approved two other projects at the Special Meeting, including replacing the deck at the Arts Station and a renovation project at the Chamber of Commerce. Council awarded both projects to Larsen Whelan Enterprises.
The deck replacement contract is valued at $83,542, exclusive of GST while the renovations at the Chamber of Commerce will cost $180,000.
Renovations on the Chamber have already begun while the deck project was set to start immediately.
“It’s going to be a busy fall,” said Smith.