GREENFIELD — The $1.9 million temporary fire station project is on track, both financially and timewise, and officials say the city will choose the contractors who will construct the modular buildings in the municipal parking lot on Hope Street by mid-February.
The Temporary Fire Station Building Committee reported Monday that the project is moving forward and so far there have been no surprises. The Fire Department expects to move into the temporary station by the end of June or beginning of July, so the city can demolish the current station on Main Street to make way for the new Greenfield Public Library.
Proposals for the modular building that will house the temporary offices and living quarters are due Jan. 21, while those for the trucks and apparatus building are due in early February. Two different contractors will be chosen for the different buildings.
Each proposal will have two envelopes — one with the technical details of the project and how each contractor would perform the work, and another with pricing information.
Owner Project Manager Neil Joyce said he will check with the state Office of the Inspector General to make sure the city follows all protocols when choosing the contractors. He said the Ranking Committee — a subcommittee of the Temporary Fire Station Building Committee — will first open the “technical” envelopes and rank contractors according to the merits of their proposals.
“Each one will be evaluated by individual members of the committees, and then ranking will be discussed,” he said. “Once three or four contractors are ranked, the pricing envelopes will be opened.”
Fire Station Building Committee Chair David Singer said the final vote will be taken by his full committee after discussions with the Ranking and Temporary Fire Station Building committees.
Once members of the full committee — which includes the members of the other two committees — vote their first, second, third and possibly fourth choices, pricing envelopes will be opened and negotiations will begin with the top-choice contractor. If negotiations are not successful, the committee will then begin negotiations with the second choice and so on.
Joyce said he will have a list of the work the city plans to do on the Hope Street site and a list of the work the city will hire someone to complete.
“I’m meeting with Marlo (Warner, who is the city’s director of public works) next week,” he told the Temporary Fire Station Building Committee. “Then we’ll know where we have to look outside of the city for who will be able to do the work it can’t provide. We should have all of that information for the committee the first or second week in February.”
Joyce said the lists could be fluid at first because the city might run into time constraints or problems on what it can and can’t do, and if that happens, it would have to hire someone to do the work it cannot. The city opted to do some of the work on the site as a way to save money.
Mayor Roxann Wedegartner said she wants constant updates so she knows whether to ask the state for an extension on the library project. The library project must break ground by April 21 to receive state funding.
“I want to make sure we ask in plenty of time,” Wedegartner said.
Ed Berlin, co-chair of the Greenfield Public Library Building Committee, said the library has every intention of breaking ground by April 21. He said there is plenty of site work that can be done before it’s time to raze the current fire station.
“We don’t have to start demolition until July 1,” he said, stating he believes there will be no need for an extension.
The city plans for the temporary fire station on Hope Street to house the Fire Department for two years. It also plans for the new fire station to be built and ready for occupancy by the end of 2023. The city is still in negotiations with the owner of the former open-air market on Main Street, the property the city has chosen as the spot for its new station.
The Temporary Fire Station Building Committee will meet again on Jan. 25, when it will discuss its evaluations of the proposals for the office building and the ranking of those proposals. At some point after that date, it will make a recommendation to the full Fire Station Building Committee, which will vote its choice.
Reach Anita Fritz at 413-772-9591 or afritz@recorder.com.