End of project ‘getting closer’
WAYNESBURG – The airport business park could be ready for its first tenant early next summer.
“It’s getting closer,” Greene County Commissioner Blair Zimmerman said about a project that was initiated several years before he took office in 2012.
At their meeting Thursday morning, the commissioners approved the engineering design for a section of road that will connect the new airport entrance to the three lots fronting Route 21 that will be leased for commercial development.
Construction of the access road will be bid by the state Department of Transportation later this month. Initial site work could start, depending on the weather, “as soon as allowable,” chief clerk Jeff Marshall said.
The county this fall also should be ready to bid the final phase of the project, construction of another segment of road that will connect the new entrance to an area east of the administration building and a new parking lot.
If all goes as planned, infrastructure for the business park could be completed sometime in late spring or early summer, Marshall said. Burns and Scalo, a real estate company that was earlier hired by the county, has already begun marketing the properties, he said.
The business park should be ready for prospective tenants at a very good time, Zimmerman said, speaking of an expected resurgence in the natural gas industry in the next 18 months as well as talk of plans for development of other properties in the vicinity of the airport.
The commissioners have said they hope at least one of the tenants at the new airport business park will be a sit-down restaurant.
The commissioners Thursday also approved a proposal from Pennoni Associates at a cost of $85,512 for inspection services on construction of the segment of road that will be built leading to the three commercial lots.
The services were requested by PennDOT, which is bidding the work for the county. PennDOT is conducting bidding because some of the funding for that part of the project is federal grant money, Marshall said.
Work on the new airport entrance, which includes creating a new four-way intersection at Murtha Drive and Route 21, is expected to be completed in November.
The commissioners also approved two change orders on the contract with A. Folino Construction Inc., which received the $768,719 contract in May to build the new entrance. The change orders were recommended by MEC, the construction manager, and Pennoni Associates.
One of the change orders, for $37,820, was required because of unsuitable soil that was found beneath a segment of the new roadway, requiring the installation of geotextile fabric, geo-grid material and additional stone.
The second change order, for $36,474, is to install temporary signal poles at the new intersection to allow the contractor to finish the paving before the blacktop plants close for the winter. Permanent signal poles are not expected to be delivered until Oct. 14.
The additional electrical and trenching work that will be completed with the installation of the temporary signal poles will result in a $11,577 deduction from the overall contract.