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The City of Minot is moving forward with the first phase of remodeling of the Minot Police Department, with a tentative bid opening set for Tuesday, Dec. 8.
The Minot City Council received a report from the architectural design lead on Monday, Nov. 2, and voted to release a bid package Thursday, Nov. 12, with advertising for bids to follow. The engineer's estimate is $4.95 million.
The first phase would bring the stairs to code and refit second floor space for police investigations but also will provide critical infrastructure improvements such as reroofing the city hall portion, electrical upgrades and ventilation system renovation.
The upcoming bidding includes alternate bids on training room remodeling, fire hall reroof, window treatments, corridor chair rail and Honor Wall enhancements. The council could choose to approve any of the alternatives once it sees the bids.
Council member Mike Blessum raised concern that the fire hall reroof is only an alternative.
"One of the things I''m a little concerned about is that if we've got a question about a roof and we're not getting that done in the first $5 million, I think we're missing where we were headed here," he said. "We have assets. If the people of Minot have invested in those over the years, job one is 'Make sure they are not deteriorating and we're taking care of them.' Job two then is 'Let's make it as workable a space for the team as we can.'"
Blessum said ideally the main bid will come in low and the city can add the reroof alternative.
"I suspect that won't be the case, and I'm a little concerned if we are not able to ever get back to allocating a bunch more dollars to the building that now, we've got a roof that we didn't take care of," he said, indicating concern about funding for future phases.
The total $21.8 million, four-phase plan for Minot’s police station proposes to turn the former city hall, police and fire building into more usable space for a law enforcement agency.
Paul Kramer, the project's design lead with Ackerman-Estvold, said there appears to be favorable conditions within the current bidding environment that could allow for adopting an alternative. Even if the base bid doesn't allow for alternatives, the fire hall reroof or portion of it still might be added in later as a change order, he said.
"There are options there, but I guess our benefit is that you will have a true number of what that replacement will come in at," he said. "We actually get a true number for what the replacement of that roof would be."
The reroof is estimated at $183,000.
The council voted 7-0 to proceed to bidding.