Airport project bids come in low

Jefferson County will renovate and make two additions to the rescue and firefighting building at Watertown International Airport, Dexter.

One addition was planned as part of the first of three phases to upgrade the building, but the cost for the second addition came in well under expectations.

"It's efficiency of scale," said James L. Lawrence Jr., the county's highway superintendent and airport manager. "It doesn't take much to do a little more."

The airport's capital plan projected the cost of the entire three-phase project at about $1.5 million. DEW Builders Inc., Adams, submitted the lowest bid on the full renovation and addition project at $433,800.

The Board of Legislators' General Services Committee agreed to contract with the local builder at its meeting Tuesday night. The full board will consider the resolution Dec. 8.

"We put out an alternate bid to see if we could have some of the rest of the buildout done," County Administrator Robert F. Hagemann said. "The cost was more reasonable than we had anticipated."

The project will begin soon and be done in 2010, Mr. Hagemann said.

The bid for the renovation of the airport rescue and firefighting building came in at $382,500. That included a 2,160-square-foot connection between the building and a recently renovated hangar. That connection will house the new rescue and firefighting vehicle and snowplows.

For an additional $51,300, the contractor will add a 980-square-foot extension along the back of the firefighting building to give more room for vehicles, storage and maintenance.

"That came in more than $100,000 under estimate, which is good," Mr. Lawrence said.

The county wants to increase passenger traffic through the renovations and a runway expansion. A 7,000-foot runway would allow planes carrying 50, 70 or 86 passengers to land in all weather. Larger planes would make the recently purchased larger rescue vehicle necessary.

The county will pay for $300,000 of the renovations from a Federal Aviation Administration and state Department of Transportation grant. The county will match the grant with $30,000, some of which was spent designing the building.

The rest of the cost of the project will come from the annual entitlement money from the FAA. Of the $150,000 the Dexter airport receives annually, $105,300 from the 2009 disbursement will be directed to this project.

The final phase planned for the building is adding office space for the county's airport team, the U.S. Customs Service, the National Weather Service and the FAA.

That would free the entire second floor of the airport terminal for county use. County airport employees work out of a former parts storage trailer built for the now defunct Big Sky Airlines.