The site of the planned campsites at Dubois County Park.
The bid for a set of improvements at Dubois County (Ind.) Park was double than anticipated, according to The Herald.
“It was sticker shock for us,” said Christine Prior, president of the Dubois County Park Board. “I was expecting it to be a little over but I wasn’t expecting it to be 100% over.”
Now, park officials are looking at what can be done to continue with the project.
“We do not feel that we over-designed anything,” Prior said. “So we are working with the architect and the contractor and just seeing where were we off on our estimate. We do have some time, luckily. But we want to get this project underway and our priorities are the restroom and the (RV) campsites.”
The park board has a master plan for various park improvements that will be worked on over several years. The first set of improvements that was put for bid included adding RV campsites, a restroom building/information center and a paved parking lot near the restroom building, as well as making trail improvements.
The Dubois County Commissioners opened last week the only bid that was received. The bid total was just over $1 million, twice as much as expected and two times more than what the park board has available. The park has a $250,000 Land and Water Conservation grant from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources and $245,400 in its coffers.
In the bid review that is underway, Prior found out that there will be a lot of utilities that will need to be installed near the new campsites. “We didn’t realize how expensive that would be,” she said.
