The Town of Twisp has tentatively approved a construction contract for a major upgrade of the town’s water system at the north end of town, including replacement of the 80-year-old water system, new individual service lines, increased fire flow, sewer repairs, and road surface improvements in the neighborhoods north of the Twisp River.
At its meeting last week, the town accepted an engineering consultant’s recommendation to award the bid to DJB Construction LLC of Wenatchee. DJB’s base bid of $1,042,343 was the lowest of six submitted for the town’s consideration. The bids were opened on April 29. The project is scheduled to begin this year.
Okanogan County Public Works also bid on a small “alternate” part of the project’s bid package, offering significant cost savings. That contract can be awarded separately.
However, Public Works Director Andrew Denham reported to the council that another major project the town had hoped to complete this summer has been delayed: reconfiguring the intersection of Canyon Street and Highway 20 to include a new bus stop, improved pedestrian crosswalks, bicycle lanes and two landscaped “refuge islands” in the middle of Highway 20.
The project “has been significantly delayed due to COVID-19 slowdown,” Denham said in a memo to the council. “The project plans are still being reviewed by WSDOT [Washington State Department of Transportation.] My hope is to get the project out to bid by early-to-mid June.”
Denham also reported that a pre-bidding conference for contractors who might bid to construct the town’s new civic building and emergency operations center “went well” and there is “significant interest in the project.”
The 8,800-square-foot building will be constructed at the site of the existing town hall. In addition to housing town administrative offices and police headquarters, the civic building is also being designed to serve as an emergency operations center for the valley. Plans are to occupy the building next year. The town’s construction budget for the building is about $3.3 million.
Several state appropriations are covering the cost of the building. Some of the state money will cover the estimated $150,000 cost of demolishing the existing building.
Mayor Soo Ing-Moody told the council that the town is closer to an agreement on a temporary site to house town functions while the new civic center is under construction. Ing-Moody said she expected to have a contract to present the council in the near future.
In other business, Denham said that the public works staff has been working on the Wagner Memorial Pool in hopes that it will ready if it is allowed to open in June. He said the nonprofit group Friends of the Pool funded the cost of the pool shell repairs this year.
