WATERTOWN — City staff members are being urged to go back to the drawing board on plans for a roof on the stone bandstand at Thompson Park after bids came in more than twice as much as has been raised for the project.
The Friends of Thompson Park, an all-volunteer committee, has been working on the project to restore the stone bandstand, located near the 10th Mountain Division Honor the Mountain Monument, by adding a roof to the historic structure.
This winter, the Friends of the Park raised its $150,000 goal, plus enough money to set aside for future maintenance costs.
But the purchasing department is recommending City Council members reject the three bids when the vote comes up Monday night. The bids were open on April 2.
Powis Contracting, Inc., Copenhagen, submitted a base bid of $233,000 and an alternate bid of $218,000.
Black Horse Construction Group, Watertown, proposed a base bid of $304,615 and an alternate of $289,696, while D.C. Builders, Watertown, offered a base bid of $379,700 and an alternate of $330,708.
“It’s back to the drawing board,” said Michael A. Lumbis, the city’s planning and community development director.
The city had projected the roof’s cost would be $194,000. Lumbis said he doesn’t know why the bids came in so high. The group still hopes the project can be completed this summer, but just delayed a few weeks, he said.
“Rejecting the bids will allow the group to consider design and/or material modifications to lower the cost and to rebid at some point in the future,” according to a memo to the City Council from city purchasing Manager Tina Bartlett-Bearup.
Brian Ashley, vice president of the Friends of Thompson Park, said the group will look at ways to reduce the project’s cost.
Under the original project, the bandstand’s concrete flooring would be replaced. Plans also call for attaching the roof to newly constructed columns and not using the existing ones.
Ashley and former Watertown Mayor T. Urling Walker came up with the idea for the project before Walker died in 2023 at age 93.
The Friends had hoped to complete the bandstand before the annual July Fourth concert in Thompson Park.
In 2022, a concert by a local big band, the Arrhythmias, was scheduled at the stone bandstand, but it was canceled because of rain. That pushed the group to get going on the project to cover the bandstand.
Council members also are expected to decide Monday night what to do with a bid on improvements for the Public Square fountain.
They will be asked to accept a bid that came in $40,900 higher than was projected for the fountain.
That project was budgeted for $55,000 in state Downtown Revitalization Initiative funding, but an Alabama company, Robinson Iron, submitted a bid of $95,900, according to a purchasing department memo.
The project’s cost has increased over time since it was first proposed about seven years ago, Lumbis explained.
Nonetheless, the city will go forward with the fountain project and pay for the shortfall with money that went unused for snow removal this past winter.
The council meets at 7 p.m. in the third-floor council chambers of City Hall, 245 Washington St.
