Sinclair demolition bids put on hold as attorneys circle; council wants to save smokestack if possible

The thunder and crash of a building demolition has started - even though the City Council last night set aside a decision to accept a local contractor's $10-million bid to bring down most of the flood-and-fire damaged old Sinclair meatpacking plant.

The decision to postpone the award of a demolition contract came over questions related to the city's bidding process as attorneys for two of the 11 competing firms addressed the council last night, one of whom already has filed a lawsuit against the city.

The council, though, did take on the related matter of the 100-year-old Sinclair smokestack, giving a strong endorsement to Maura Pilcher, chairwoman of the city's Historic Preservation Commission, to see if she and others can quickly find funds to study, stabilize and, ultimately, restore the smokestack.

However, council member Pat Shey noted that the clock is ticking on the smokestack, which city, state and federal officials have said is in danger of collapse and is a threat to demolition crews working nearby. Shey said the city needed to see some action from Pilcher before demolition crews at the Sinclair plant got to the spot near the smokestack in the next couple of months.

Only council member Chuck Wieneke spoke to bring the smokestack down now, calling it a safety risk.

“I'm not a sentimental person, and I don't believe we need to save a phallic symbol down at the Sinclair site,” Wieneke said.

As colorful of comments came about the demolition bids from Cedar Rapids attorney Tim White, who told the council he was representing Rachel Contracting, St. Michael, Minn.

White noted that Rachel submitted a bid for the demolition of $5.56 million, $2.3 million lower than the next lowest bid among the 11 bidders.

However, White said the city staff rejected the Rachel bid for not following the bid specifications. Specifically, Rachel's bid was rejected because the company planned to haul the Sinclair demolition debris to a private landfill in Milan, Ill., which charged about a fifth of the cost of dumping it as the local landfill, commonly called Mount Trashmore, near Czech Village.

White said city officials didn't care about the considerably higher costs of using the local landfill because the Federal Emergency Management Agency was paying the bill. City officials had come to see FEMA money as “money from heaven,” without thinking that taxpayers still foot the bill, he said.

After the meeting, Greg Eyerly, the city's flood-recovery director, noted that the city's bid documents clearly stipulated that contractors use the local landfill even though the charges there are significantly higher.

Eyerly said the Sinclair debris includes asbestos-containing material, the responsibility for which the city of Cedar Rapids “owns forever,” he said. It is not material you want to “lose control of” as it shipped to an out-of-state site, he said.

State and federal officials approved the demolition and landfill parts of the bid, and contractors knew what was required of them, Eyerly said.

In total, city officials found the two lowest bidders failed to follow the bid, two others were not responsible bidders and a fifth submitted an incomplete bid. The sixth lowest bidder – local bidder D.W. Zinser Co. of Walford – appears to be the lowest responsive and responsible bidder with a bid of $9.8 million.