After receiving approvals from the Board of Selectmen, the Inland Wetlands Commission and the Planning & Zoning Commission in the last few weeks, the much discussed Miller-Driscoll renovation project cleared its final in-town approval hurdle at last night’s (Thursday, June 25) Board of Education meeting. That’s when BoE members voted unanimously to approve the project.
That approval from the BoE was the final okay needed for M-D Building Committee chair Bruce Hampson, Tai Soo Kim architect Randall Luther and Turner Construction’s Ty Tregallas, to proceed with sending the project plans to the CT State Dept. of Education for approval.
To present to the BoE, the trio brought with them an impressive pile of final documents—schematics, design drawings and budget breakdowns—to explain where the project is and how it will proceed once the it passes muster at the state level.
“These are the documents that can be turned into something that can be built,” Luther said, adding that he anticipates the documents will go to the state on July 28 for review. Per the state’s official process, such review is supposed to be completed within 30 days. Once the state authorizes the project, Turner can build bid specifications based on the drawings and budget estimates that have been completed, and those can go out to subcontractors for bidding.
(BoE chair Bruce Likly clarified that Turner Construction would not be doing any building on the project—rather they’d be setting up the bid documents for state approved contractors to consider.)
“We’re looking at the end of August to go out to bid, that’s what we’re expecting,” Luther said.
Tregallas told the board that the project’s budget estimates have been refined even further and that the project is “on budget and within scope,” adding they were “very pleased with the outcome” after finishing the more detailed budget estimate in June.
“The numbers headed in the right direction, and we were able to add another $300,000 into the contingency.” He explained that they’ve been able to increase the overall project contingency numbers from 7-percent up to 8.3 percent, or $3,461,000.
He did caution that while he says the project is “in a very good place,” a lot depends on when they go to the step of bidding out the project.
“We’re very optimistic, but the market is the market and it depends what’s in the pipeline. We’ll try to time it as best as we can, but CT is a relatively small market. If Yale or UCONN has a project hitting the market, it could affect our process,” he explained, referencing both timing and cost.