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Low bid for fairgrounds work comes in well under estimate

Posted March 12, 2008 11:00 pm

Doug Finke

A low bid of $1.8 million submitted by B&B Electrical of Springfield on Wednesday won the contract to install some 22 miles of underground electrical cable at the Illinois State Fairgrounds.

The Capital Development Board, which is overseeing the project, asked five companies to submit bids for the fairgrounds work, and B&B was by far the low bidder of the four that did. The next-lowest bid, submitted by Anderson Electric of Springfield, was just over $3 million.

State officials estimated two weeks ago that the repairs would cost about $3 million.

A representative of B&B Electrical did not return a phone call seeking comment.

CDB, which expects work to begin Thursday, wants it sufficiently completed by May 16 to enable the fairgrounds to reopen to the public. The site has been virtually shut down since early February because of safety concerns over repeated electrical failures.

There are no financial penalties if the company fails to meet the deadline, said CDB project manager Gary Kitchen. However, B&B is required to work a double shift seven days a week until the project is finished. Kitchen also said weather should not affect the work schedule.

The electrical problems forced dozens of events scheduled at the fairgrounds to either cancel or move to other locations. Acting Department of Agriculture Director Tom Jennings told an Illinois House appropriations committee Wednesday that the department will lose about $150,000 in rental income because of the events that can no longer be held there.

"The big impact is to the surrounding economy," he said.

That includes two major events -- the Springfield Horse Fair (canceled) and the Illinois Beef Expo (moved to Bloomington) -- that both were expected to draw more than 10,000 visitors to the city. Tourism officials estimated each of the events was worth $250,000 to the Springfield economy.

Jennings said the department is working to replace lost events and the revenue they would have provided.

"We have a very aggressive event scheduling and rescheduling program," he said.

"We have two to three people now working to draw new events to the fairgrounds. We are working to make it up."

Rep. Gary Hannig, D-Litchfield, asked if it would have been cheaper for the state to repair the electrical system before all of the transmission lines had to be replaced at once.

"Nobody expected it to fail," Jennings responded.

After the hearing, Jennings said the department did nothing wrong.

"It's (the cabling) run its useful life out. Maintenance is not an issue on the high-voltage lines out there," he said. "We never had any problems with the high-voltage lines whatsoever. We did not expect this systemic problem to occur."

In response to questioning from Hannig, Jennings said the fairgrounds is subject to ongoing maintenance, currently including a new water system in the Grandstand and a Grandstand roof project set to start later this spring.

"We are in constant conference with CDB on prioritizing all of the different projects that we undertake out there," Jennings said.

CDB is conducting a survey of all state-owned properties to determine what work needs to be done on them. The survey is supposed to be completed in the fall.

However, Rep. Raymond Poe, R-Springfield, demanded nearly two weeks ago that the survey results for the fairgrounds be released now. CDB said it will comply, but Poe said he's still waiting.

"They said next week, possibly. Possibly," Poe said Wednesday after talking with CDB officials.

Poe said he was told it is taking time to condense thousands of pages of engineering reports.

"It was all just a rough draft," he said. "They're going to try to pull everything together into a report. We'll see how the report looks."

Doug Finke can be reached at (217) 788-1527.

The submitted bids

-- B&B Electrical of Springfield: $1,860,000

-- Anderson Electric of Springfield: $3,051,511

-- Bodine Electric of Decatur: $3,386,700

-- Egizii Electric of Springfield: $3,414,713

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