New Albany Pools Could Cost Just $6.2M to Build

Eleven hopeful contractors crammed into a school district conference room Wednesday afternoon hoping to have turned in the lowest bid for the pending Albany Pool project.

The apparent low bidder, McCrary Construction of Belmont, CA, submitted a base bid of $6,179,000. Officials will take the next 12 days to confirm that "everything is in order," said project manager David Burke of Bollo Construction, before making the official decision Sept. 7 at the Board of Education meeting.

The bid was well below estimated pool construction costs of more than $7 million.

But Mike McCrary took the news in stride.

"I've been doing it for 51 years, so I don't get too excited," he told the group. His last pool project was in Brisbane, CA. He said he's built "several pools."

"They're not easy projects," he added.

Voters approved a $10 million bond to fund the pool project in 2008. Some of the remaining money can be used for outdoor portable classrooms, while the rest of the budget will go toward costs associated with the project.

Burke said, at this point, it looks like there could be an $800,000 "bid savings," on the original $7 million estimate for pool construction.

Officials have said they needed to wait until they knew the pool's cost to consider classroom space in depth. Wednesday's meeting brings them one step closer to deciding how many classrooms (from three to eight) and what style will work best at Albany High School.

Superintendent Marla Stephenson said the district also needs a better understanding of the high school's capacity before deciding on classrooms.

Burke, who also is a demographer, will make a preliminary report to the board on Sept. 7 about how many students the high school can safely hold.

Pool bids had to be turned in by 2 p.m. to be considered. Up to the last minute, literally, contractors were on their cell phones waiting for final details about various costs. By law the project must be awarded to the lowest bidder, so contractors hold that information close to avoid getting beat.

It took about 20 minutes for Burke to open all the sealed envelopes, announcing the contractor's name and bid amount for each as builders and officials alike filled out a gridsheet to track the numbers.

Other than the sound of the envelopes opening and the announcements, the room was silent while everyone waited for Burke to go through the packets.

The bids ranged from McCrary's $6.2 million up to about $7 million. The bottom four bids all were within less than $200,000 of each other, which officials said indicated the numbers likely were "safe": that the contractors read the plans consistently, and that there was a relative consensus about how much, roughly, the pools will cost.

The numbers were so tight that, at one point, one of the contractors broke the silence to say, "It's been a rough day."

District officials recently described the bidding climate as very favorable because construction work is scarce, which means more competition for jobs.

Other contractors have five days to challenge McCrary's bid if they see problems with it, but officials were confident that one of the low bids would pan out.

Stephenson pointed out that, had the project gone according to its original timeline, the bids might well have been higher.

The project to replace the former Albany pool with two new pools and add classroom space for the high school is being funded by Measure E, a $10 million bond measure voters approved in February 2008. 

After the recession and a troubled bond market, not to mention concerns about costs and design, pushed the district to delay the project, the Division of the State Architect in July approved a two-pool plan, calling for an indoor and an outdoor pool. The plan envisions room for at least three classrooms, one of which is double-wide.

The mood was hopeful Wednesday after the bid opening.

"This is a huge milestone for the project, which we've talked about for almost four years," Burke said. "It's a great step forward. Now the real work begins."

See a photo gallery of the former Albany Pool here.