At long last, downtown restoration moves forward
After five years of talk, city board members propelled the Main Street McMinnville downtown revitalization project a major step forward and approved the low base bid Thursday.
Construction for improvements to downtown’s infrastructure and the addition of many decorative elements was estimated at around $3.5 million, but the low base bid was roughly $500,000 more than officials had in mind after rejecting the first set of bids last month.
In approving a bid just under $4 million from Apex Construction Services Ltd. of McMinnville, officials said they hoped to reduce the city’s costs by having the city’s Public Works Department perform demolition work like removing sidewalks, asphalt, trees, grass and awnings, as well as putting up barriers.
City officials had previously discussed using city departments to do more of the work after the first set of bids were more than $1 million above engineer’s estimates and were rejected.
Apex co-owner Greg Brock, present for Thursday’s vote, said after the meeting of the McMinnville Board of Mayor and Aldermen, he was looking forward to participating in one the city’s largest projects in recent history. He indicated he is agreeable to the city doing some of the work.
Vice Mayor Patti Nunley, along with Mayor Royce Davenport, mentioned a major study from the 1980s that strongly recommended improvements downtown as a gateway to economic development.
“I understand downtown will never be the retail center it was 100 or 50 years ago,” Nunley said of reasons she believes downtown revitalization is needed. “That’s not going to happen. That’s not the way we live. But downtown, somewhere, you have to have an identity as in, ‘This is McMinnville.’ Downtown is that entity and it needs to be as clean and fresh and well cared for as we can make it look and this infrastructure is how you do that.”
Davenport, who was not in office when the city committed to the Main Street McMinnville program in 1999, was initially a skeptic.
“Over the last 3-1/2 years, I’ve gone from being a questioning citizen to a convinced mayor that this is what our community needs to do for our future,” Davenport said after Thursday’s meeting. “It will give us a more competitive stance for business recruitment, improve the quality of life for our residents, and it will give us an infrastructure that will last another century.”
Main Street McMinnville director Chris Wilson said officials are “ecstatic” improvements appear to be on the way.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt in anybody’s mind now that this is going to happen,” Wilson said. “And I think that around August, we’ll probably be seeing some kind of construction.”
Davenport and others indicated negotiations with the contractor are forthcoming. He did not give an estimate of how much the city could save by doing more work, but noted the goal is to reduce costs to EG&G’s construction estimates of $3.5 million.
Total project costs were initially estimated at around $5 million. Part of the improvements are being paid for with state and federal grants.