Brick Gym Renovation Delayed As Bids Exceed Budget

Brick, NJ -- It's been more than 50 years since the bleachers were installed in the East Gym at Brick Township High School.

And it's going to be a little bit longer before they are replaced, after bids for renovation work in the gym were rejected on Thursday after the bid received "substantially exceeded the cost estimate" for the work.

The agenda for the Brick Township Board of Education's special meeting last week, held for the board to approve the bids for that project and to replace doors at Brick Memorial High School, Herbertsville and Osbornville Elementary schools, says the bid received exceeded the cost estimate for the gym project.

It did not say who the bidder was or the bid amount.

The school budget for 2016-17includes $174,382 for renovations to the East Gym, including bleacher replacement, removal of a sliding divider that is no longer needed and floor sanding and refinishing, and cleaning of the rafters.

The bleachers and the floor refinishing are perhaps the most critical part of the project. The bleachers are the original ones installed in the 1960s when that portion of the school was built as a middle school.

Those bleachers are now cracked and the mechanisms to open and close them do not work properly.

"They cannot be repaired anymore," said Richard Caldes, who presented the facilities portion of the budget during its introduction in April. "The parts are not available." More importantly, they are not compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, he said.

The bleachers have made ruts in the floor where they have dragged across it, and the floor has some damage from when the East Gym roof leaked -- but Caldes said that damage was not severe enough to force replacement of the floor.

The divider in the gym, which was used to split the gym into two portions years ago, has not worked in years, Caldes said at the budget hearing, and serves no good purpose; on the contrary, it interferes with use of the gym for certain sports, including volleyball.

The western end of the high school was the original Brick Township High School, constructed in the late 1950s and opened in 1958. The high school and middle school were connected sometime later by hallways that created a courtyard; that addition includes the school's library.

The district had hoped to complete the gym project this summer, but the bid rejection will likely result in reexamining the project for ways to reduce the cost before the project is put out to bid again.

Some of the capital work that was proposed in the 2016-17 budget has been bid out and bids approved.

The door replacement work contract was awarded to ACP Contracting Inc., for $76,400. That includes replacement of the auditorium doors at Brick Memorial, which are not compliant with fire codes; replacement of the gym doors at Osbornville school, and replacement of the doors to the all-purpose room at Herbertsville. Those projects orginally were estimated at about $68,000.

Paving and reconstruction of pedestrian walkway access behind Brick High School, estimated to cost $280,000, was awarded to Johnson Baran Corp., which bid $193,064.80. That project is being funded through capital reserve funds, officials said.

And reconstruction and repaving of the front parking area at Lake Riviera Middle School, which had its original parking lot configuration from when the school was built in the 1970s, was awarded to Fiore Paving Company, which bid $378,103.15.