By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Last week, the Kansas State Fair Board accepted the bid for the first phase of the Bison Arena Project.
"Lowest bidder was HarmanHuffman Construction out of Kechi and that is the base bid plus four alternates, which will include some site utilities, interior demolition, some interior masonry restoration, and also some exterior coping replacement," said State Fair General Manager Bryan Schulz.
This is basically a new roof, new doors, tuckpointing and lifting the building.
"There are a couple areas where it's starting to sag a little bit, just kind of getting the whole envelope put together," Schulz said. "Then with the alternates, it's bringing in some of the utilities into the facility and then also some of the tearing out some of the areas within the building, doing some interior demolition as well."
They don't know a timeline for construction yet.
"Probably in the next week or so, we'll get together with them to kind of get timelines, all that kind of stuff and working around all the stuff that's going to happen during fair," Schulz said.
The base bid came in at $4.440 million and then all of the alternates for a total of $5.105 million. The Kansas Legislature appropriated $10 million for the project, but the fair will be doing a lot of other fundraising to finish it out, as estimates have been north of $30 million for the full project, and costs of materials continue to rise.