Old Gig Harbor building houses 5 times the city staff it used to. They’re getting new digs
There are about five times the employees working in the building that houses Gig Harbor’s Operations Division than when the facility was built in the ‘80s.
It originally housed five or six employees, Public Works Director Jeff Langhelm told the Gateway Friday. Today, 30 employees work there at the division’s peak each summer.
They’re about to get new digs.
The Gig Harbor City Council unanimously approved a $3.7 million construction contract with Pease & Sons at the March 27 council meeting for a new Operations Center Building.
The Operations Division is in charge of the city’s roads, stormwater infrastructure, parks, water infrastructure, and it maintains the city’s facilities and fleet equipment.
The new 5,500-square-foot building will be close to the existing one, just north of Pioneer Elementary School on Skansie Avenue. Langhelm said he expects it’ll be ready by next spring.
He said the building and site development will end up totaling about $5.5 million, though some of that site development served a dual purpose. They developed the site a few years ago for a separate project, to build and install a well there.
Langhelm told the council they put the project out for bid in July 2022. They only got one, and it was “quite a bit more” than they budgeted, he said.
The council rejected that bid, the city revised the project slightly, and they put it out to bid again in February. This time they got five bids.
“Pease & Sons was the apparent low bidder at $3.7 million, roughly,” Langhelm told the council.
The council also approved a $221,000 contract with Lawhead Architects for construction support services.
Langhelm told the council that he doesn’t “anticipate spending all of that $221,000, but it’s there if we need it.”
He explained that the city has in-house staff that can do much of what consultants would. On average, the city only ends up spending about 50 percent of what its construction support services contracts plan for, he said.
Council Member Jeni Woock said the project was a long time coming.
“It’s going to be efficient, it’s going to be safe, it’s going to take better care of our employees and our equipment,” she said at the meeting.
