Library bid officially awarded to Groathouse

WORLAND – The Washakie County Library is set to have a new home, this vision took one step closer to becoming a reality when the Washakie County Commissioners officially awarded a bid of $2,173,051 for the project to Cody-based company Groathouse Construction at their regular meeting Tuesday.

The process of moving to a larger space for the library has been a process that has been discussed since 2007. Discussions of renovating or relocating the library began in 2016 when the commissioners at the time began discussing with TSP what their options were regarding renovating the library or what it would cost them to build a new library entirely.

The discussion was ongoing until March 2019 when Shopko closed its doors, and Kennedy Ace Hardware announced their intent to purchase the building in order to move their business from 801 Big Horn Ave.

The commissioners then entered into negotiations with Gerry and Lee Kennedy to purchase the main Ace Hardware building and settled on a $525,000 purchase price for it in September 2019, along with a $125,000 purchase for the Kennedy Ace Repair Shop located on the north corner of the block.

Funding for the project has come primarily from the 2008-2012 one-cent sales tax which totaled $1.8 million, along with a $1 million donation from local resident Mike Healy last December and a $500,000 Community Enhancement Grant that was approved in June to help with additional funding for the project.

After receiving the Community Enhancement Grant the County Commission began a search along with their engineers TSP to find a suitable contractor to lead the project.

In late August, Groathouse placed a bid along with Heart Mountain Construction out of Powell and Hughes Truss Company out of Worland with Groathouse tentatively awarded the bid. In just over a month, Groathouse, TSP and Washakie County have been working on getting the original bid of $2,674,000 within the county’s $2.2 million budget for the project.

The bid was officially awarded at the commissioner’s meeting, and a notice of award for the bid was sent to Groathouse, which included five local area subcontractors in the bid. The commissioners along with TSP and Groathouse intend to work on a contract over the next two weeks, and sign the contract officially at their next meeting on Oct. 20 so that Groathouse may begin construction as soon as possible.

BRIDGE DISCUSSION

Also at Tuesday’s meeting, the Washakie County Commission, Washakie Rural Water Supply representatives and Wyoming Department of Transportation (WYDOT) discussed a problem regarding the water line being too close in designs to the new Cottonwood Creek Bridge near Winchester with construction set to start in the 2022 fiscal year. The fears surrounding the project is a future issue where the waterline may break and cause large damage should the current design not allow for ease of access for repairs.

The discussion centered on what would need to be done with the bridge and water line as they both needed to be within the county’s right of way and could not be shifted too far south as WYDOT did not want to interfere with the railroad located near the road to the south.

Keeping those issues in mind, the new bridge design is longer than the bridge currently in place and thus the proposed bridge will have to be shifted north in order to accommodate the railroad to the south and not interfere with their bridge over Cottonwood Creek.

Solutions that were discussed included attaching the waterline to the bridge and insulating it to not cause any problems in the winter, moving the bridge further north along with the water line which would require a new right-of-way easement and construction to move the line, along with other solutions including the potential of shifting the creek flow.

The commissioners along with WYDOT and Washakie Rural Water Supply (WRWS) were attempting to find a solution at the smallest cost amount for both the county and WRWS. They requested amounts for the solutions which primarily focused on the line being attached to the bridge.

There was no timetable given from WYDOT on when the numbers would be provided and no dates given for any future decisions at this time.