Kosciusko County Parks and Recreation Board President Rob Bishop looks through a bid packet Thursday to find the costs projected by the bidder for the countywide blueways and greenways master plan and/or the Chinworth greenway (also known as the Lake City greenway) extension design.

Text and Photos
By David Slone
Times-Union

WARSAW — Bids for the Chinworth greenway (also known as the Lake City greenway) extension design and the blueways/green ways master plan were opened by the Kosciusko County Parks and Recreation Board at their meeting Thursday, Oct. 19.

Board President Rob Bishop said the bids will be reviewed, with selection of a finalist scheduled for 9 a.m. Nov. 2, which will be a public meeting. Interviews with the finalist will be held after that meeting, with the board intending to select a vendor at 1 p.m. Nov. 16 to recommend to the county commissioners. The commissioners will be asked to review and approve the parks board’s recommendation at their 9 a.m. Nov. 21 meeting.

The first bids opened were from The Troyer Group for the greenway extension and then for the master plan. As Bishop and board member Matt Metzger looked for dollar amounts in the bid packet for the trail extension, Metzger said there didn’t appear to be one.

Board member Aggie Sweeney said, “Rob, this is the one that there was the confusion on whether or not they really needed a bid, or if it was just a statement of qualifications.”

Bishop said he thought they clarified that issue. Moving on to The Troyer Group’s bid for the master plan, he said he didn’t see a cost estimate in the packet, though there may be one in there and he just wasn’t seeing it. Thursday was the first time the board had opened bids for anything.

Sweeney was able to find the cost later for the master plan in the bid packet from The Troyer Group and it totaled $89,000. She could not find the bid for the greenway extension design, though the packet had construction cost estimates.

The next bid was from Jones Petrie & Rafiniski for only the greenway extension. The base bid was $252,340; with alternate 1 being $504,680; and alternate 2 at $757,020.

RQAW and DCCM, in their greenway extension bid, included both the design services and construction estimates. Bishop said for the greenway extension, the Parks Board was looking for design services. The P.E. (professional engineering) services in the bid were for a base bid of $300,000; alternate 1 was $620,000; and alternate 2 was for $1,010,000.

The stack of bids for the countywide blueways and greenways master plan and Chinworth greenway (also known as the Lake City greenway) extension design sit on the table Thursday before they’re opened at the Kosciusko County Parks and Recreation Board meeting.

McKenna was the next bidder on the blueways/greenways master plan, but they didn’t include a total that Bishop could see. They did list the work and cost estimates, however, as: existing condition analysis, $25,000; meet with the public, $16,500; develop draft plan, $24,000; meet with the parks department and public, $9,500; develop priorities and final plan, $18,500; and other, $93,500. Bishop said it was possible the “other” might be the total cost, but they would look closer at that.

Taylor Siefker Williams Design Group offered a range of expenses for the master plan, but not a total that Bishop could see. Those expenses were: existing conditions from $12,000-$18,000; meet with public, $24,000-$36,000; develop draft plan, $20,000-$30,000; meet with parks board and public, $12,000-$18,000; and develop final plan, $16,000-$24,000.

Triad Associates offered bids for both, but Bishop couldn’t find the costs during the meeting. After the meeting, a representative of Triad pointed out in their bid packet the base services, which were: existing condition analysis, $8,000 for about 60 hours; public engagement process, $8,000 for about 60 hours; draft plan and priorities development, $32,000 for about 240 hours; parks department and public engagement process, $12,000 for about 90 hours; and final plan and priorities development, $20,000 for about 150 hours.

After all the bids were opened, Sweeney asked, since there was some confusion on the process when the request for proposals was first released, “If a firm submitted interest for the greenway extension, but didn’t submit a bid, does they mean they’re disqualified from our consideration?”

County Commissioner Cary Groninger, who was in the meeting’s audience, asked if it was talked about at the pre-bid meeting. Bishop said there was talk and concern at the pre-bid meeting but he did send out an update on cost estimates but it dealt more with the master plan. “I think we can deal with this as part of our meeting with the vendors as well, and if they wish to provide a cost estimate for us we can publish that as part of the next meeting, I would think, as well,” Bishop said.

Groninger explained that some of the bids were read aloud Thursday. “Normally, if the numbers weren’t given at the time of the bid, then they would not be eligible,” he explained.

Bishop said they will look and if the bidders did bid pursuant to the RFP and if the bid packet did have costs in it then those would “certainly go forward.”

Later in the meeting, board member Mike Cusick asked if each board member was going to get one of the five copies of each bid to look over.

Groninger said they are public record now. When the commissioners open bids, normally anyone present has an opportunity to look the bids over directly after the meeting, he said. But after that, they can be distributed among the board members for their review to offer recommendations.

After the Parks and Recreation Board’s meeting, Bishop summarized both proposals.

The countywide blueways and greenways master plan “is not extraordinarily in-depth but it will lay out the basic places where we think we should build trails and what they look like. So we expect these to be viable paths but it is not a full engineering study of those paths,” he said.

The greenway extension will start at the Chinworth bridge “and we really want to get to the point where we’re building out past the Creighton Brothers facility, that will take us through all those houses down along that stretch. That’s our first trail ready to go,” Bishop said.

The county has already set aside American Rescue Plan Act funds for both the greenway extension and master plan. Bishop said they were given $850,000 for the design/build of the greenway extension, and then funds for the master plan totaling less than $90,000. The town of Winona Lake also has about $30,000 in grant funding it has offered to go toward the countywide blueways and greenways master plan.

While he still has to look more closely at the bids that came in, Bishop said it appeared that they will have enough money for the master plan but they will have to look closer at the costs for the greenway extension project.

“We certainly have sufficient bids. How those plan out in terms of what we want to do, I don’t have an opinion on that with my two-minute look,” he said.

ARPA funds have to be allocated by the end of 2024 and spent by the end of 2026. Bishop said the master plan won’t be a problem and that could be done by summer 2024.

“The Chinworth bridge is going to be a little more difficult because we’ve got to do this design study and then we’ve got to put the bid out for the construction and then they have to do the construction, but we think we have sufficient time to get all of that done,” he stated.