Riverfront Prison demolition bids below projection

A dozen bids submitted yesterday to demolish Riverfront State Prison in Camden came in at less than a third of the $6 million set aside for the project by the Delaware River Port Authority.

Bradenburg Industrial Service Co., the low bidder among the 23 bids submitted, projected a total cost of about $1.25 million to tear down the recently vacated prison. Bradenburg is based in Chicago and maintains an office in Bethlehem, Pa.

The highest bid was placed by W. Hargrove Demolition of Camden at just under $4.9 million, according to a list released by the New Jersey Economic Development Authority.

Company owner Bill Hargrove said the economy had played a major role in raising competition and pushing down prices.

"Everybody's more aggressive in this economy, bidding-wise," agreed Pat Creelman, an estimator with Robert Winzinger Inc. of Hainesport. "It's not like you have a lot of backlog to take care of."

Winzinger placed the sixth-lowest bid at about $1.6 million.

Hargrove said his bid reflected concerns about what it might cost to dispose of asbestos in the building.

"We didn't want to not have enough money to do it in the manner we thought it should be done," he said.

Hargrove was "really surprised" the other bids went so low, he said, but he didn't question Bradenburg's calculations.

"They're big operators," he said. "I'm sure they know what they're doing."

Bradenburg spokesman John O'Keefe said the prison "is normal, if not below" the size of project the company normally takes on. According to its Web site, the company has worked previously in New Jersey, including demolishing structures at Kean University in Union and a power plant in Middlesex County.

Twelve of the bids were from New Jersey demolition companies, with others as far-flung as Massachusetts and Michigan.

Bids and bidders will be vetted before a company is approved Sept. 8 by the Economic Development Authority, spokeswoman Erin Gold said.

"It's not just the lowest; it's the lowest responsible bidder," Gold said.

One of the requirements is paying workers a prevailing wage, she said.

Jeff Nash, vice chairman of the DRPA, declined to comment on the bids until they had been vetted and refused to speculate about how the authority could use more than $4 million potentially left over from its initial allocation.

"Obviously I would be pleased if the bids came in less than expected," he said.

The money that DRPA is using for the demolition dates to 1999, when the Port Authority borrowed $50 million for dredging the river, Nash said.

Last year, about half of the remaining $38.5 million was dedicated to riverfront development. In July, a resolution put $6 million of that money toward the prison-site demolition in hope of attracting private development and green space.

The demolition is part of a plan to revitalize North Camden, and any leftover money would be spent there, Nash said.

Rod Sadler, president of Save Our Waterfront, was pleased to hear about the low bids.

But he also was cautious about unexpected costs - such as the possible discovery of "old underground storage tanks" - arising at what was an industrial site before the prison was built in 1985.

"We have our fingers crossed that the state did due diligence when they built the prison," he said.