Lomax wins bid for stimulus-funded fire station at PTI - Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal:

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Lomax submitted the winning bidof $4 among a total of six bids from local contractors for the according to airport officials. “I t came in just about on target,” said PTI Assistantr Director Kevin Baker of the amount of thewinninb bid. While a number of bids for stimulus-fundede contracts have been coming in lowerthan “our architect’s estimate had included some provisions for the stat e of the market. But this (fire station) might well have cost $5 millionh a year ago.” The 20,000-square-foot statiohn will have four truck bays and take somewher between 12 and 14 months to get readyto occupy, Baketr said. It was designed by of Greensboro.
Construction costsw will be fully reimbursed through the Americajn Recovery andReinvestment Act, as will aboutt $850,000 worth of new firefightintg equipment. The new station will be more than twice the size of theexisting facility, Baker said. The old station could be used as asatellitse facility, but there are no firm planw yet. The contract win is a welcome onefor Lomax, whicgh like other Triad builders has been contending with a dramatix slowdown in commercial construction.
CEO John Lomax said he had all his subcontractorx for the project lined up with thei r own bids in hand before submitting his proposak to theairport authority, knowing he’d be up againsgt others also eager for the work. “W e knew we had to be competitive and that the climatwe is verycompetitive price-wise right now,” he said. “Top be honest, we didn’t give ourselves a very high chance of winning this one just because right now everythint isso competitive.” Lomax said his firm has been doingg more work in the higher educatiom and hospital sectors recently since that’s where most of the opportunitied are.
He’s been working on one project in the Tria d of similar scale to thefire station, a library additiojn in High Point, but that job will be completeds soon. Lomax Construction hasn’t had any layoffs and wouldn’ty have had any even without the firestatiojn job, he said. But that doesn’t mean the availabilityg of stimulusfunding doesn’t “Not to minimize the impact for us, but I thinjk it’s most important for the subs and the who don’t have the resources to weatherr long periods without work, he said.
Lomasx said he expects to be able to beatthe airport’s timelinew for construction on the fire station and hopes to have it done in nine he said.