Winter Haven to award bid for Seventh Street improvement project

WINTER HAVEN — Awarding the job for the Seventh Street improvement project will be on the consent agenda during Monday night’s City Commission meeting.

The lowest of eight bids came from St. Augustine’s Watson Civil Construction in the amount of just under $2.64 million. The second-lowest bid came from local Tucker Paving at $2.78 million. The city has a policy where it can give the job to a local company if the bid is within 2 percent of the lower bidder, but the local company would have had to have come in at less than $2.69 million.

“There’s been a very thorough reference check,” City Manager Mike Herr said at Wednesday’s night agenda review workshop. “When you haven’t done business with the firm, you want to have the best reference you can. I feel very, very confident moving forward with this project.”

The project is intended to improve the roadway, drainage, lighting in the area and to be more pedestrian-friendly. The project was budgeted for $3.24 million for the current fiscal year.

AIRPORT PROJECT

Also on Monday’s agenda will be a relocation of an entrance road at the Winter Haven Regional Airport. The project is a joint venture between the city and Florida Department of Transportation.

FDOT is set to take on 80 percent or about $342,000 of the $401,000 project. The other $59,000 or 20 percent would be paid by the city.

The goal of the project would be to create a new access road from U.S. 92 to the airport. One runway is currently obstructed by an entrance road to Jack Brown’s Seaplane Base, which makes 400 feet of that runway unusable.

TIME AND PLACE

Monday’s meeting will take place at 6:30 p.m. in the Fuller Auditorium at City Hall, 451 Third St., NW. Mayor Brad Dantzler was absent from Wednesday night’s workshop.

Mike Ferguson can be reached at Mike.Ferguson@theledger.com or 863-401-6981. Follow Mike on Twitter @MikeWFerguson