Lockwood-Mathews mansion renovation project delayed
NORWALK — Extensive renovations on the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion hit a roadblock when nine aspects of the project received no bids for the work.
The city will resubmit a request for proposals for contractors to conduct work on the historic mansion after an RFP from October garnered too few bids, officials said.
In May, the mansion released plans for a $13.5 million renovation that will include some modern technology in the historic home. The bulk of the renovation is to upgrade the mansion’s technology and utilities, according to Patsy Brescia, vice chair of the mansion’s board of trustees.
Now, the renovation timeline is changing, as the RFP, released in early October and closed Oct. 28, yielded few responses, Brescia said. During last Wednesday’s Historical Commission meeting, the group voted to move forward
with the release of a new, revised RFP for the project.
“The contracts were broken down pretty much into real biddable sections. We thought that would attract more bidders because it’s such a complicated project and we thought that might work,” Brescia told the commission.
The contracts were divided into 20 different bid requests, ranging from spray on fireproofing to storage and mobile shelving, according to the bid documents.
Nine of the categories received no bids, Brescia said.
“One of them was plumbing, the protection plan, which is super important to us for installing protection on all of the walls on first and second floor and grand staircase,” Brescia said. “It’s an amazingly complicated bidding process and with everything going on, so much construction, the bidders were saying, ‘We got a lot of work. We need more time to put our bids together.’”
There were also no bids for the building’s HVAC work. Several factors contributed to the lack of bids, including the length of the open bid, the expertise required for the project and other opportunities, Brescia said.
“One of the bidders who had worked on the mansion previously was called back because they didn’t bid, although took out the documents and we thought they would. We learned after they had just been awarded a bid for The Barnum Museum in
Bridgeport, so they were in middle of that in our bid process,” Brescia said. “Our consultants have gone back to everybody in the trade and learned reasons why people didn’t bid, so we are now trying to structure a bid package that will respond to those issues.”
Initially, the work was set to begin in January and run until about May 2024, according to the bid documents.
The new RFPs, however, will go out around the start of the new year, Mansion Board of Trustees Chair Doug Hempstead said.
“We are going to have to go out and rebid again through the process,” Hempstead said. “Our timeline has changed. We’re staying flexible. It’s anticipated right after the first of the year we will go out to bid again with the city. We will allow three to four weeks this time around to respond, give them enough time.”
The gathering and sifting through of the bids, along with the contract approvals, is expected to take several months, with construction not likely to begin until June or July, Hempstead said.