LONG BEACH — Santa brought Christmas early for the city of Long Beach last week, when the low bid for the long-awaited reconstruction of the city’s boardwalk came in almost $1 million below the projected cost.

The Long Beach City Council at its May 19 meeting unanimously authorized Mayor Sue Svendsen to enter into agreement with the lowest of the 12 bidders, Woodridge Construction, which is based in Monroe in Snohomish County. The firm’s bid came in at $2,206,351, which is just over $993,000 less than what the city’s engineer, Gray & Osborne, estimated the project would cost.

The renovation will see the replacement of all of the boardwalk’s decking, as well as basically everything else above the piling — including the railings, and the lighting on the east railings. The 35-year-old structure will also be raised in some areas, and a stainless steel water fountain will be installed at the south platform.

Not without intrigue

Woodridge Construction did not initially have the lowest bid when they were unsealed at city hall on May 15; that honor belonged to Gig Harbor-based Massana Construction, with a bid of $2,214,612. Woodridge’s initial bid was second-lowest out of the dozen bidders, at $2,258,351.40.

But as Gray & Osborne was conducting routine vetting of each of the bidders, which is done to ensure that contractors’ calculations are accurate, the engineering firm found that Woodridge Construction had overestimated the cost of its bid by just over $50,000.

“[Gray & Osborne] kind of came into this situation where they noticed that Woodridge used one unit price but they calculated the extended price,” Ariel Smith, the city’s deputy administrator, told councilors. “The unit price was $52,000, but…they used [the extended price of] $104,000 in the total, which made them second. But the rules say we go by the unit price, so that’s $52,000, which makes them the lowest bidder.”

Massana lodged a bid protest in light of the development, requiring Gray & Osborne to submit to them a formal response explaining their findings. Once that response was received, Massana had two days to file an injunction, which it declined to do.

The council had several approaches it could have taken at its May 18 meeting, but ultimately voted to conditionally authorize Svendsen to enter into an agreement with Woodridge once the bid protest process was completed. Smith confirmed on Friday, May 23 that the city had officially awarded the bid to Woodridge.

Under budget

That the low bid came in nearly $1 million under the engineer’s estimate was an extremely pleasant surprise for city officials.

Long Beach in 2022 was awarded a $2.5 million grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration for the project, which came via the American Rescue Plan Act that was signed into law the previous year. It was a crucial development for the reconstruction project to be able to move forward after several years of trying to secure state or federal funding.

Those funds were expected to cover the bulk of the cost for the needed repairs, but the city was expecting that it would still have to devote considerable dollars from its lodging tax reserves — upwards of $700,000, based on Gray & Osborne’s estimate.

“The fact that we’re $1 million under what we had assumed it might be means we can actually hire a project manager [during construction], which is going to be great because it’s going to be a very consuming project,” said Svendsen.

The exact start date for construction is still to be determined, with much depending on when Woodridge has all of the needed lumber on hand or if they have an ongoing project that they would prefer to wrap up before starting on the reconstruction of the boardwalk.