There’s a lot going on in the 900 feet of North Main Street: access to the Old Saybrook Train Station, to a new 199 space station parking lot, to the Post & Main apartments, to Saybrook Junction, and to local businesses. So the planned $1.3 million project to rebuild this key gateway to the Town Center needs to go smoothly and be finished as quickly as possible.

That is why First Selectman Carl Fortuna, Jr., scheduled public scope review meetings with the project’s low bidders: to make sure the chosen contractor clearly understood the job’s requirements and its importance to the town.

The first project scoping meeting between the town team and a project bidder was held on April 12 with then-low bidder B&W Paving and Landscaping; that firm’s low bid of $875,105 was withdrawn the day after the April 12 project scoping meeting. That made Mizzy Construction, with a bid of $1,128,225, the North Main project’s new low bidder.

Fortuna scheduled a new project scoping meeting between the town’s project team and Mizzy Construction representatives. At the close of the May 25 meeting, the town’s team was confident the submitted Mizzy bid reflected the project’s scope as defined in the bid documents. As a result, Fortuna decided to recommend Mizzy Construction be chosen for the North Main project.

At the table representing the town were the Board of Selectmen; the town design engineer Geoff Jacobson; a representative from the project inspection engineers, Weston & Sampson; Finance Director Lee Ann Palladino, Town Building Official Don Lucas; Town Public Works Director Larry Bonin; and Police Chief Michael Spera. Three representatives of Mizzy Construction were at the table answering questions about their bid, what it included, and the schedule.

“One of the reasons we’re doing this is that this is a really important job to the town,” said Fortuna in opening the meeting. “There are going to be a lot of people watching this from the town.”

Jacobson’s original cost estimate for the project was $1,344,547; however, in his written analysis, he noted that Mizzy had priced a different method for the trench work than Jacobson had priced. Mizzy proposed using shoring panels and trench boxes that the firm owns rather than installing shoring piles for the trench work. As a result, Mizzy’s costs would be less than for the trench work than Jacobson had originally estimated. When Jacobson adjusted for this difference, the bid came within $1,000 of the new adjusted estimate.

Since funding is coming from the State of Connecticut’s Local Transportation Capital Improvement Program, the town’s choice must be reviewed and approved by the Lower Connecticut River Valley Council of Governments (River COG), the agency that allocated the North Main Street project funds, and by the State of Connecticut Department of Transportation (DOT), the agency that is the source of the funds.

To trigger this review, the town project team sent two letters: One was from Fortuna to River COG Executive Director Sam Gold recommending Mizzy Construction be chosen for the project; the other letter, also to Gold, was sent by Jacobson, analyzing the bid compared to the engineering cost estimate and providing documentation of the town’s bid assessment. Both letters along with the documentation package was then forwarded to DOT’s Bill Grant for final review and approval.

By the March 23 deadline, the town had received four bids for the North Main Street rebuild project that ranged in price from B&W’s low bid of $875,105 to M&O Construction Company’s high bid of $1,310,750.

Fortuna expects the River COG and DOT reviews to move quickly. He is optimistic that work on the project could begin in early June.

Although the construction schedule allows the work to take up to 180 days, Mizzy representatives said in the scoping meeting that its plan is to finish the work within 120 days.