City of Lawton officials prepare to launch next round of street upgrades

Members of the City Council’s Streets and Bridges Committee are ready to recommend Lawton firm T&G Construction as the contractor for the next round of community-wide street upgrades.

The new recommendation follows completion of the first round of street projects in the program city officials have dubbed Top 10 Wins for residents. The project was designed to identify streets throughout the community that could be upgraded through mill and overlay, giving those streets more life without completely rebuilding them at much greater cost. In mill and overlay, the top layer of asphalt is ground off, then replaced with a fresh layer of asphalt.

Ellsworth Construction recently completed Northwest 53rd Street, the final street on the first Top 10 list, and members of the Streets and Bridges Committee are moving forward with the remaining streets that were designated on the initial priority list of 41 streets. City staff opened bids from three construction firms earlier this week, and Ward 4 Councilman George Gill said he is ready to make a recommendation to the full council next week to award the projects to T&G Construction, Lawton. That was the recommendation of the Streets and Bridges Committee, which Gill chairs.

The Lawton-based company is the apparent low bidder on projects that were broken into two packages, each containing 14 streets as the base bid. Two other streets were listed as alternates because they are more labor-intensive than the other streets: Northwest Lincoln between Northwest 38th Street and Williams, and Northwest Ferris Avenue between Northwest 17th Street and Fort Sill Boulevard.

Chris Serrano, with the consulting design engineers EST, said breaking the total priority list into two packages will allow City of Lawton officials to make the best choices, based on the amount of work to be done, what contractors will charge for the work, and the amount of funding available.

“It gave the city the greatest flexibility,” Serrano said.

Gill asked EST to set priorities for the streets included in those bids packets, telling Serrano to be ready to make those recommendations at Tuesday’s council meeting. Gill and Mayor Stan Booker have said their goal is to move forward with the street work so repairs are completed as quickly as possible, with funding to come from a loan the City of Lawton will secure.

Serrano said engineers were happy with the bids and their cost, noting T&G Construction’s bids were 20 percent below engineering estimates and bids offered by all three construction firms were “pretty close.” The engineering estimate for Project A totaled $6,354,612.29, including both alternates ($4.32 million for the base bid), while contractor bids for the cost of the base bid and both alternates ranged from $5.15 million to $6.1 million, or $3.92 million to $4.5 million for just the base bids.

For Project B, the engineering estimate was $7,078,245.09 for the base bid and two alternates, and $5.04 million for just the base bid. Contractor bids ranged from $5 million to $6.3 million for the base bid and both alternates, and $4.02 million to $4.76 million for just the base bid.

Ellsworth Construction, the contractor selected for the first street upgrade list, recently completed those projects ahead of schedule, and the city was pleased with the quality of work, said City Engineer Joe Painter and Streets Superintendent Cliff Haggenmiller. Ellsworth Construction, T&G Construction and Rudy Construction have all done previous work for the City of Lawton.