Airport gets 11 bids for taxiway project

The Eastern Iowa Airport received a larger-than-normal number of bids for a construction project related to a new corporate aircraft hangar.

Eleven Eastern Iowa companies submitted bids for a taxiway connector and apron that will provide access to a new hangar for Kinze Manufacturing. The Cedar Rapids Airport Commission on Monday awarded a contract to the lowest bidder, Eastern Iowa Excavating & Concrete of Cascade, for $398,286.

Don Swanson, airport director of finance and administration, said he rarely sees a double digit number of bids for construction projects.

'We were one of the first paving projects to be bid this year and we timed it that way,” Swanson said. 'I think we beat the first state paving project bid by a couple of days and that helped as well.

'The top five bidders were very close, so that told us we received good bids and had a good engineer's estimate for the project.”

Foth Infrastructure Environment of Cedar Rapids prepared the bidding materials for the airport, reviewed the bids and will supervise the construction. Eric Scott, Foth project engineer, said three to six bids would be typical for such a project. 'I don't recall getting 11 bids before,” Scott said. 'The timeline on the project is fairly flexible, which also helped us get more bids. Contractors looking for work this year were able to build it into their schedule.

'We are anticipating firing up construction in May. We are a little bit dependent on the hangar construction, so we will not start too early.”

Williamsburg-based Kinze has agreed to construct the 12,000-square-foot hangar and sell it to the airport for no more than $1.5 million. The airport will lease the hangar to Kinze for an initial 25 years with two five-year optional extensions.

It will be the fourth corporate hangar along with facilities owned by Alliant Energy, CRST International and Rockwell Collins.

'The dollar amount of this project appeals to a lot of contractors,” Scott said. 'It's not a real large or small project. There are a lot of guys who look for projects in this cost range.”