NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The Hutchinson City Council approved the bid for the first phase of the Woodie Seat Freeway project at the council meeting Tuesday.
"The county has a portion of this large project," said Jeff Schenk with engineering. "They are doing partial depth and full depth repairs on the bridge over the Arkansas River, while we are doing a mill and overlay from the Arkansas River to the Avenue C bridge. We are also tearing out and replacing all of the approach slabs, because of a design fault in them. We are rubblizing the concrete aprons that go down the sides of the roadway. We are also removing that raised median that goes all the way down. It will be maintained on the bridges at this time, but eventually that will completely go away, to keep up with current design standards."
The engineering estimate prior to the bid process was $3,476,984.20.
The city received one bid from APAC Shears for $4,101,411.44. The city portion is $2,520,661.53. The county portion is $1,580,749.94. This takes care of everything south of the Avenue C bridge.
"The south approach slab up to the bridge will be removed and replaced," Schenk said. "The intention to finish out Woodie Seat is, this is the first phase. The second phase is the roundabout. Then a third phase will actually be necessary and that is to do the partial and full depth repairs on Avenue C, whenever we have the capacity to get that budgeted."
There was one other potential bidder, but Pearson Construction decided not to submit a bid.
"Their schedule was too full," Schenk said. "We pushed the schedule to be a little bit more aggressive, which may have cost a little bit more, as well. The intention was to hopefully not have too much overlap between this and the next phase of Main Street construction. That could start early next year, as well. We don't like putting contractors butting up in construction zones and traffic control."
The City's portion of the project is being paid for with ARPA funds and the Cost Share grant.
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