Northampton School renovation comes in $30 million over estimates

The bids for the renovation of Northampton High School were not what Supervisors, the School Board and County staff had hoped for.

The lowest bid, $84,456,429, was more than $30,000,000 off from the architect’s estimates.

“Not good,” said County Administrator Charlie Kolakowski.

Northampton’s Supervisors already expressed unease about the price tag of the project at Tuesday night’s meeting, worrying the project would put the other County services in jeopardy.

“We are going to be circling back with the contractor to try and dig in and find out what’s driving these costs,” he explained. “We need to know why they came in so much higher than estimates.”

Estimated to be in the $51,000,000 range, the County already has a good chunk of the money borrowed at a lower interest rate, but still needed to decide how to fund the final $10,000,000 of the project.

At a price tag of $84.5 million, the County would have had to find approximately $40,000,000 more.

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