City officials opened bids for the east bank portion of the “Our River…Our Riverfront” project on Tuesday, which resulted in two responses, but details beyond that are sparse at least for now.

Redevelopment will take time to go through the bids from Milestone Contractors and Morphey Construction before awarding the work at a later date.

When bids were opened, there were no dollar-figures associated with each submission. The contractors had to include information under multiple submission tabs, so redevelopment officials have to look through them.

Bidders were asked to submit a lump sum base bid on the city’s online bidding website, as well as proposals for alternates as part of the project.. The submissions also required a schedule of values to support the bids, Assistant Director of Redevelopment Mikala Brown said.

“We will need to review all associated attachments, combined with the schedule of values and lump sum values to assess the bids comprehensively for completeness before acknowledging and awarding the successful bidder,” Brown said, adding that the work would be awarded in the “near-future.”

Brown sat alongside Mary Krupinski of JS Held, the project manager, as the bids were opened during a board of public works and safety meeting at Columbus City Hall.

Bids for the work were originally supposed to be opened last week, but it was pushed back after contractors requested more time to put together estimates, according to redevelopment officials.

The project is divided up into three parts: work to the west side and east side of the riverfront and then removal of the deteriorating lowhead dam in the East Fork White River.

The work to the east side will involve the connection to the People Trail from Mill Race Park over to Water Street, according to city officials.

West side work has already started. EDCO Contractors is working to provide west bank access for eventual lowhead dam removal and bank stabilization, which involves the removal of trees, implementation of a construction access road and filling in a scour area, the spot of the former landfill.

The Columbus Redevelopment Commission hired EDCO for that portion in January for an amount not to exceed $454,318.

Jerry Sweeten of Ecosystems Connections Institute was enlisted by redevelopment to take out the dam, which will begin in 2026. Sweeten will obtain required DNR permits and look for additional grant opportunities, which the project is now eligible for with the removal of the in-water features originally included in the project, city officials said. Sweeten helped with the removal of Edinburgh’s Thompson Mill Dam in 2024.

In-river features — like a recreation channel, rock riffle ramp and fish habitat structures— proved too expensive two times over during bid processes last year, so redevelopment officials opted to scale the project back to focus on the removal of the lowhead dam, stabilizing the bank and connecting to the People Trail.

The project is using $5.6 million of Regional Economic Acceleration and Development Initiative (READI) funds, and had to be started by March in order to maintain that funding, according to city officials.

Columbus City Council members in December 2023 approved $11.5 million in tax-increment-financing (TIF) funding for the reimagined riverfront. Taylor Brothers had given the project an overall cost estimate of $14 million, which the TIF funding city council approved in late 2023 was based on.

As of now, $7.4 million in non-TIF dollars have been directed to the remake of the riverfront, made up of $5.6 million in READI funds and $1.8 million from various funding sources including a $1.72 million Next Level Trails Grant from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, along with contributions from Duke Energy and the Columbus Park Foundation. Overall, the city has about $18.9 million in funding sources directed towards the riverfront project.

Hitchcock Design was tasked in January with creating an updated redesign of the riverfront that would remove the existing lowhead dam, stabilize both banks, provide access to the river and connect to the People Trail, but without the in-river features.

With the removal of the in-water features, Hitchcock Design’s Randy Royer said he didn’t see the project coming in higher than the $18.9 million approved for the project.

The riverfront project has been in the works since 2016 and was estimated to cost $8.9 million in 2017. But the price has climbed due to increased construction and labor costs, as well as additional costs associated with environmental mitigation requirements imposed by state and federal regulators, city officials have said. Royer said in January that the project, with the in-water features, has essentially tripled in cost over the past eight years or so.
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