Peters Township council awards $265K design contract for Rolling Hills Park
Peters Township council approved a contract Monday for the design of the next phase of Rolling Hills Park’s development.
Council unanimously awarded the contract to Pittsburgh-based Gateway Engineers, and the cost of the work is not to exceed $265,860.
The township plans to have the area of the park along Rolling Hills Drive transformed with two fenced-in basketball courts, a full-sized dek hockey rink, a hard volleyball court, a two-acre dog park, restrooms and a sidewalk network.
Mark Zemaitis, township engineer, said at Monday’s meeting requests for proposals were sent to three firms in August. Zemaitis told council that he recommended Gateway for the project.
“Gateway was also the only company that actually came to the table with a concept layout, so that was a good jumping-off point during the interview,” Zemaitis said.
A bid from Pittsburgh-based Johnson, Mirmiran and Thompson was the highest submitted at $287,223.
Cranberry engineering firm Herbert, Rowland and Grubic had the low bid at $188,150, but a memo summarizing the bids provided to council by Zemaitis notes they were hesitant to commit to a “not-to-exceed” price. HRG instead submitted a bid in which the cost would be based on time and materials.
HRG’s interview with the township also steered Zemaitis away from recommending them.
“There were not a ton of questions asked about the project and it seemed apparent that minimal investigation of the site and the project were completed prior to the meeting,” Zemaitis wrote in the memo.
The decision to move ahead with the park development comes after council had to nix plans for an aquatic center earlier this year when bids came in significantly over budget.
The aquatic center would have been built on a plot of land in the park adjacent to the area council is currently planning to develop. The facility would have included a pool, water slides and a lazy river.
At Monday’s meeting, Zemaitis stressed to council the importance of the project’s design phase.
“The design is the cheap portion of the project. It’s the construction that is expensive. If you have a design that’s not optimized, not efficient or you have ambiguities with contract documents, that’s what costs you the change orders and the difficulties in construction,” Zemaitis said.