TOWNSHIP OF WASHINGTON—The township administrator said local officials hope to advertise bids for construction of the new DPW facility by sometime this summer, if all goes as planned.
Township administrator Mark DiCarlo told Pascack Press on May 22 that the architect, Arcari & Iovino, was working on all final site drawings and was anticipating putting out bid specs during the summer.
“There is no set date but the architect is working on all the final drawings. The architect is shooting for the summer for putting it out to bid. Of course, nothing is set in stone. Give it a little in either direction,” DiCarlo told Pascack Press.
Mayor Peter Calamari told residents May 15 that if initial bids come back too high, the council could reject all bids and rebid the project to try to lower costs.
Calamari told residents in May that the township’s consulting architect and engineer’s work on the new DPW facility were “progressing” and that they hoped to soon advertise bid specifications for the estimated $5 million DPW facility that council members approved earlier this year.
In mid-February, township council members selected an all-brick facade for the roughly $5 million new public works facility that will be built behind town hall. The new facility will replace the former DPW facility, which was razed amore than a year ago due to long-standing soil contamination from leaking gas storage tanks on site in the 1970s.
The NJDEP had ordered the township to demolish the structure and remediate soil contamination beneath the building, although the project lingered for years before the township took action to demolish it and remediate the soil contamination.
In December 2022, the township’s consulting architect, Arcari Iovino, estimated a brick and mortar building would cost $4,978,350. (An all-brick facade building was not offered then as an option.)
The proposed new two-story DPW facility includes a first floor with five vehicle bays (one is a wash bay), and also first floor space for tools, tires, a laundry, two utility rooms; two staircases, and an elevator.
On the second floor are two sleeping quarters, two offices, a meeting/break room, three lavatories, two showers, men’s and women’s lockers, and a storage and mechanical room.
When approved in February, it was not yet clear what would happen with space currently occupied by the former volunteer ambulance headquarters behind town hall. The ambulance corps recently moved to new quarters in the new Emergency Services Building on Washington Avenue.
Calamari also said May 15 that paving contractors would meet soon to coordinate paving schedules as completion nears for the county’s Pascack Road-Washington Avenue intersection project, begun last summer with multiple road delays and backups over the last 10 months. Pascack Road and Washington Avenue are county roads.