Connellsville awards bid to demolish Dutch Bottom homes
With a total of nine bids, Connellsville City officials were relieved to award a contract to Jadell Minniefield Construction Services Inc. of Pittsburgh for their low bid of $174,200 to demolish 23 homes in Dutch Bottom affected by the 2016 flooding.
“This is well under what PEMA (Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency) was going to approve to spend for this, so if there is some snag or something that comes up throughout the process, we can probably still make those payments,” said Mayor Greg Lincoln.
There were actually several different ways that companies could bid the project, including just the asbestos inspection, just the asbestos removal, just the demolition or all three parts of the project combined.
Solicitor Tim Witt recommended to council that it would behoove them to go with a company that would do all three parts of the project because of the time constraints associated with the use of the PEMA money.
The city has just 90 days from the time they buy out the first of the 23 property owners to purchase all properties and have them demolished and the land reclaimed.
The bid by Jadell Minniefield includes doing all three parts of the project.
City Clerk Vern Ohler said he did reference checks and all of the company’s papers were in order.
“I reached out to the different municipalities that they’ve done work for and Wilkinsburg Borough gave them a good recommendation,” Ohler said.
“(Officials) at Homestead also said they come highly recommended even though they are all newer to the board and haven’t personally dealt with them.”
Witt said, moving forward from this point they hope to be able to begin making offers to property owners during the week of Dec. 18.
“We already have a lot of the title work done, but there are few properties, and one in particular, with some loopholes that we’re trying to work through right now,” he said. “Assuming we can get the loopholes taken care of, we’d like to close on these properties and get the owners their money the week before Christmas.”
“I’m so excited that we’ll possibly be able to get the property owners their money before Christmas,” Lincoln said. “It will be an early Christmas gift for these people who have waited 15 months for this all to be over.”