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Okoboji City Council Awards Bid On Speier Park Playground Project

December 13, 2023 Steve Schwaller

(Okoboji)– The second time was the charm for a playground project at Speier Park in Okoboji. The city council Tuesday evening awarded a bid on the project after receiving only one bid that came in much higher than expected at a bidletting earlier this year. The council wound up scrapping that bid and started the process over. City Administrator Michael Meyers says they were able to get three bids this time and that the low bid was about $100,000 less than the one received previously. He says some flexibility in the timeframe for the project was one of the factors in allowing the city to get more favorable bids this time around…

“Yes. So certainly having the flexibility of time was a big help here. We did give them the option of doing this in the spring of 2024 or the fall of 2024. It sounds to me like the contractor prefers the fall of 2024 which we’re 100 percent okay with. The big thing was just making sure our park wasn’t torn up during the summer.”

The low bid of nearly $165,000 was awarded to Cory Juergens Construction. Meyers says it includes an alternate…

“We had a base bid and an alternate 1 bid. The base bid was the lion’s share of the site preparation and sidewalks for this project. The alternate number 1 was the addition of a little bit of extra sidewalk but more importantly two water fountains associated with the facility. So there will be a water fountain added on the west side near the playground and then there will be a second water fountain that will be added over by the pickleball facility. That pickleball one, it was just the opportune time to get this done while the site’s completely tore up so we’ll run a water line out there and provide water service to the pickleball facility as well.”

Plans call for the contractor to begin work around August 12th, 2024. Meyers says city crews will remove the existing playground equipment, which was sold in an online auction earlier this year, prior to the contractor moving in. The Speier Park Playground project has a substantial completion date of September 14th, 2024.

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