Nichols
LAURINBURG — The city of Laurinburg has received another grant from GoldenLEAF to help with the relocation of the North Fire Station.
The North Fire Station suffered damage during Hurricane Florence in 2018 and since then the city has been working to relocate the area from North Main Street to Aberdeen Road.
“We are extremely grateful and appreciative of Golden Leaf for the additional funds they approved for this project this week,” said City Manager Charles Nichols. “They approved $375,000 on top of the $1.2 million they had already awarded us due to the increase in construction costs.”
During last month’s city council meeting, the council voted unanimously to reject the bids that had come in for the project as each one was over the budget. The city did go back out for bids after some minor changes were done with the architect to see if it would lower some of the prices.
When the city first began looking into the project before the pandemic, it was quoted that the five-bay structure would be around $1.5 million but due to construction costs rising in the last few years, the price has gone up.
The prices for the base bid ranged from over $3 million to just under $2.5 million. Each bid did include five different alternatives, as well as the city, had several options for the fire station drawn up as options to potentially add on to the building later if the costs were too high.
“Our next steps are on Feb. 9 — we will have the bids for the construction of the fire station,” Nichols said, “We hope that when we meet with the council for the Feb. 22 meeting, we will have all the funds and a low bid for them to approve so we continue moving forward with this project.”
Besides GoldenLEAF, the city has also received funding from FEMA and the state for the project. Once the city jumped through all the hoops with FEMA which took about two years, FEMA awarded $135,898 to the city. When the state budget was passed for the 2021-22 year late last year, there were several budget items for Scotland County which included $1 million for the fire station.
Reach Katelin Gandee at kgandee@laurinburgexch.wpenginepowered.com.