The Twisp Town Council has accepted a bid of $800,000 for construction of a new public works shop on Cottonwood Street to replace the existing shop at Town Hall.
It was the second round of bidding on the shop project. Original bids came in higher than expected. The second-round winning bid by Halme Builders of Davenport is still about $50,000 more than the town had estimated, Mayor Soo Ing-Moody said.
“It’s over the initial amount, but it’s the low bid and everything is in order,” Ing-Moody said.
In a later interview, Ing-Moody said the town will look for additional ways to bring costs down.
The new shop is part of a larger project to replace Town Hall with a new structure. Plans call for razing the current building, which is plagued with structural and functional deficiencies, including cracked walls, inadequate fire and security features, poor ventilation and water damage. Twisp has been allocated $970,000 in state funds for the civic building project. The town has hired Architects West Inc. of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, to design the buildings. The total project, from design through construction, is expected to cost $2.7 million.
In other business at its meeting last week, the council postponed action on a ordinance to vacate a portion of Third Avenue as part of the new civic building project. Preliminary plans for a propose extending the building into a portion of Third Avenue next to the current Town Hall and closing the street to vehicles.
The proposed vacation was earlier the subject of a public hearing, where some residents raised questions about the action’s affect on parking and traffic circulation. At last week’s meeting, council members said they had a few more questions about the vacation’s impact on net parking. Possibly returning Second Avenue to two-way traffic west of Glover Street was also discussed. Currently, that street is one-way eastbound between Highway 20 and Glover Street.
Twisp Town Council meeting day changed
The Twisp Town Council’s regular meeting will at 5:30 p.m. on Monday (March 27), a one-time change from its usual Tuesday night meeting schedule. The change was made to accommodate conflicts on some council members’ schedules.
