Monroe County’s Capital Improvement Board is looking for a construction manager and owner’s representative for the convention center expansion project.
The board authorized a request for qualifications, or RFQ, to be issued for both roles at a Wednesday meeting.
An RFQ is a screening to establish a pool of qualified firms. Interested firms have three weeks to respond.
Board member Eric Spoonmore is on a three-person committee that will review RFQ responses.
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“If we think that they’re a good fit, we would do an RFP (request for proposal) at that point,” Spoonmore said. “That would include much more detailed scope work, and budget numbers — that kind of thing.”
An RFP solicits a proposal often made through a bidding process.
Spoonmore said the construction manager is the contractor the board works with and will do up to 20 percent of the facility’s construction.
The owner’s representative will work with the construction manager to ensure deadlines are met and costs don’t exceed what’s in the budget.
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Spoonmore said he still has questions about the project budget before an RFP is issued.
“We really do need to have a firm, accurate budget before we enter into those relationships,” Spoonmore said. “We just don’t know what that final number is. We think we’ve got kind of a sense of it based on some financial analysis that was done in 2019, but a lot of things have changed since then, including interest rates, construction costs, and the revenue stream from the food and beverage tax.”
The board said it wants to keep Schmidt Associates as the project architect. The firm has so far done preliminary design work for the project and will do more detailed work if kept as the project architect.
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Moving forward, the board will include new member Jay Baer. Baer replaces Mick Renneisen, one of two members appointed by former mayor John Hamilton whose term expired Jan. 15. Mayor Kerry Thomson retained Adam Thies, also an appointment of Hamilton, as a board member.
The county council and commissioners must ratify an interlocal agreement for the project to move forward. They have yet to do so.
The commissioners recently discussed possibly amending the agreement, which would require it to be sent back to the mayor’s office and city council for re-approval.
It’s not clear if they still want amendments, or when they could make that decision.
