By CHERYL ROMANO/YachatsNews
YACHATS — The city of Yachats has a contract with Unitus Services of Vancouver, Wash. to rebuild the West Seventh Street library with demolition of the old structure planned for March 6.
Unitus was the low bidder last month at $1.53 million when seven firms bid on the project, which is budgeted at $1.5 million. After modifications to some of the building specifications, a final contract amount was reached at $1.36 million.
To arrive at the lower figure, city infrastructure clerk Neal Morphis said the city and contractor agreed to change some items including switching from tile to vinyl flooring in restrooms, replacing quartz countertops with laminate, deleting requirements for wall felt, and removing a foundation drainage system due to the slope of the lot. In addition, the city will stripe the parking lot and build signs.
At a meeting scheduled Thursday, Unitus expects to receive its formal “Notice to Proceed.” That starts the clock ticking on a 270-day requirement to finish the new construction, which puts completion in late November. The contract contains a standard daily penalty for failure to meet the deadline.
“It would take some really bad weather and really bad materials delays for that building not to be done in 270 days,” Vernon Nielsen, president and owner of Unitus, told YachatsNews.
A 32-year veteran of the construction business, Nielsen said the March 6 demolition date will depend on the weather.
“I’m pushing for that date,” he said. Demolition will be handled by 3 Kings Environmental of Battle Ground, Wash.
“We’ll use a large number of subcontractors from Lincoln County for concrete, electrical, insulation and excavation work,” Nielsen said in an interview.
Unitus has scaled down from its past size, when it headed projects across the U.S. as a mostly federal contractor. Now, the four-person firm takes on smaller jobs such as a municipal building in Jackson County and a remodel of the Lincoln County jail lobby.
Yachats’ original library is 51 years old and has been targeted for expansion for about 20 years. After much discussion about moving to another location or simply adding on to the existing structure, the least expensive option turned out to be tearing down the building and starting over on the current site.
The new facility will offer some 3,600 square feet of books, magazines and DVDs, plus a community meeting room and an area for teenagers and children. The old structure measures 2,400 square feet.
The library continues to operate in temporary quarters in Room 8 of the Commons. Entry is on the north side of the building next to the large blue book return box. Hours are noon to 3 p.m. Monday through Saturday.
Last spring, the most popular books and newest titles, children’s titles and some periodicals, along with two public access computers, were moved to Room 8. While the temporary space is less than half the size of the original library, the collection continues to be enlarged with new books each month, and now DVDs, as well.
- Cheryl Romano is a Yachats freelance reporter who contributes regularly to YachatsNews. She can be reached at Wordsell@gmail.com
I love that the library is such an important part of such a small community. City administration of it is very confusing. Yachats bought the bank building to use as a library. Someone decided a million dollars would be required to turn it into a library so that plan was scrapped as too expensive. The bank building was turned into City Hall for, apparently, pocket change as I don’t believe there was ever a budget item for renovating the building. Now the least expensive way to have a new library costs 1.3 million dollars or $378 per square foot. An out-of-state contractor has been hired promising to use local sub-contractors but, the old building will be demolished by another out-of-state contractor.
The bright spots are that we will have a new, bigger library and that YYFAP got to move out of the basement. In my perfect world City Hall would still be in the Commons, the library would be in the bank building (the million dollar price tag was always bogus) and YYFAP would be in their own, purpose built building.