Which firm is awarded the contract for the Ind. 49 Utility Corridor project will depend entirely on whether the Porter County Council opts to partner with the Town of Chesterton.

At the Redevelopment Commission’s meeting Monday night, Town Engineer Mark O’Dell reported that some of the bids needed to be recalculated, after staff determined that not all of them had been submitted on a unit-price basis.

Those recalculations yielded the following results:

•If the County Council does authorize an expenditure of $742,409 for the so-called Alternate 1—under which the sanitary sewer infrastructure will be upsized to serve unincorporated Liberty Township—then LGS Plumbing Inc. of Crown Point will be awarded the contract. Its total bid—base plus Alternate 1—was $2,880,865. The next lowest total bid after recalculation was $2,938,716.70, submitted by Grimmer Construction Inc. of Highland.

•If, however, the County Council opts not to pursue a partnership with the town, then Grimmer will be awarded the contract. Grimmer’s base bid: $2,135,829. The next lowest base bid was $2,138,456, submitted by LGS.

The commission scheduled a special meeting for 6 p.m. Monday, July 30, for the purpose of awarding the contract. The bids submitted are good through Aug. 6.

The County Council, meanwhile, was unable to decide at its meeting Tuesday night whether to pony up for Alternate 1. It will hold another meeting at 5:30 p.m. Monday, July 30, at which to take a final vote.

In related news, Town Attorney Chuck Lukmann reported that bond bids for the project will be opened today.

Meanwhile, members voted 4-0 to approve a contract with DLZ, at a price of $69,940, for the preliminary engineering study of the Dickinson Road extension project.

That study will include a traffic analysis.

The Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission has signaled its willingness to work with Chesterton, as the town continues to pursue the extension—which would link Indian Boundary Road with East Porter Ave. via Council Drive—but NIRPC wants to see a preliminary engineering as a condition of the partnership.

In other business, Member Jim Ton announced that NIRPC has appropriated $200,000, as part of a grant for the construction of a new traffic signal at the intersection of Indian Boundary Road and North Calumet Road.

“It’s our money,” Ton said. “We can start to spend it.”

The town is paying 100 percent of the engineering cost for the signal. The grant will pay 80 percent of the construction cost.

Mike Jabo of DLZ said that engineering began “in earnest this spring.” But Jabo added that the project may not go out for bid until the town has acquired a permanent easement—on CSX right-of-way—for the signal, and that the acquisition process is likely to take some time.

Posted 7/24/2012