New bid for Hatley Way sidewalk to Walmart coming this winter
Tony Marcolina | Argonaut
The City of Moscow is looking to extend Hatley Way by put- ting a sidewalk from the Palouse Empire Mall to the Moscow Walmart. The sidewalk will go in front of U-Haul and will help people to stay off the highway and make their walk safer.
The City of Moscow is looking to extend Hatley Way to connect the Palouse Empire Mall to the Moscow Walmart.
The sidewalk will extend from the current mall parking lot to Hatley Way that runs in front of U-Haul and will get there by way of a sidewalk loop. The sidewalk would allow people to stay off the highway sidewalk and make their way over to Walmart easier.
“Our thought was to get people from the Palouse Empire Mall over to the sidewalk in front of the U-Haul, so that they could end up walking up to Walmart,” Moscow City Council Member Walter Steed said. “Walmart was nice enough to agree, back before they even opened, I think, to somewhere around $18,000 in funding.”
Earlier this fall the city solicited quotes from three contractors, but only received one response — a $21,008.70 bid for the base sidewalk and another $9,893.71 for an alternate concrete stair from Knox Concrete of Lewiston. The city council rejected the bid.
“When they did it this fall they only got one person that was interested in it at all, and it was at a price that was greater than what we originally thought,” Steed said.
Walmart has already offered to pay for $18,694.50 for construction of the project.
The plan is now to take another chance at rebidding the project later this winter or in the early spring in the hopes that they can receive a bid that is under their projected costs,” Steed said.
“For the time being, the project is being redesigned to modify the scope of the work so they don’t end up doing more work than they need to, Steed said.
When the final bids do come in, and depending on the scope of the project, there is still a chance that the city may use sidewalk program funding to supplement the funding from Walmart.
Regardless of what number Walmart decides they want to spend on the project, the city wants it to be finished and it will happen, Steed said.
“I don’t believe if it is greater than the Walmart number, which they were given by us I understand, I don’t think that is going to be a problem,” Steed said. “We could conceivably explain it to Walmart, see if they want to give us a little more. I would presume if they don’t we would go ahead and build it anyway. We would really like to see it built.”
The request was originally reviewed at the Public Works/ Finance Committee meeting and was forwarded to the city council for approval of the contract, which reviewed it multiple times to compare the price to similar sidewalks around town. It was eventually postponed to completely address the situation and receive a bid that would more closely fit the scope of the project.
Jacob Dyer can be reached at [email protected]