New bids sought on Calatrava bridge
Dallas officials hope designers can help contractors lower costs
Dallas Morning News, The (TX)
August 15, 2006
Author: EMILY RAMSHAW and TONY HARTZEL; Staff Writers
Estimated printed pages: 2

Dallas officials said Monday that they will seek new bids beginning next week for the first budget-breaking Trinity River bridge, but they said the bridge specifications will contain no major alterations.
If the new bids - expected in mid-fall - break the bank, too, City Manager Mary Suhm said, the city's 40-story "signature" bridge will need a major redesign.

"We still believe we can build a bridge for the amount of money that we have," Ms. Suhm said. "Everybody's got to sharpen their pencils and give us new bids."

Some experts say that's wishful thinking.

Without a change in a project's design, the prices for a highway or bridge will not go down over the next few months, said Tom Johnson, executive vice president of the Associated General Contractors of Texas.

They may actually go up.

"You had smart people giving good bids," said Mr. Johnson, whose organization represents major road builders' interests statewide. He said he wasn't familiar with the Dallas bridge project. "If there is a change in design, the bids will come in cheaper. If you put the same packet of information out there ... the bids are generally going to be a little higher."

Bids for the Woodall Rodgers bridge, the first of three to be designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, came in at more than twice the anticipated $57 million cost in June.

This time around, Ms. Suhm said, Mr. Calatrava's design team will work with contractors in advance of the bidding, advising them on alternative materials and techniques and slight design tweaks to keep the bridge under the city's latest $65 million cap.

Ms. Suhm wouldn't give specifics on these alternatives, though she indicated that the bridge's sky-scraping height is not on the chopping block.

"The design is not substantially changing," Ms. Suhm said. Mr. Calatrava's team "really, really believes they can get it done. They're committed to working at it."

Officials from the Texas Department of Transportation, which manages the bridge bidding process, said it's "not a big deal" to rebid the project. The department will cover the administrative costs, they said.

"That's on the order of a couple of thousand dollars, vs. potentially saving millions," said Bill Hale, Dallas district engineer for the department.

Mr. Hale said initial discussions for a new Woodall Rodgers bid have centered on making small project changes, such as allowing the use of cheaper foreign steel and reducing the size of support columns in the ground.

Mr. Calatrava has a reputation for breaking budgets in the U.S. A Milwaukee art museum and a Redding, Calif., footbridge he designed both swelled over their estimates.

But his contract with Dallas says he will design the bridge within the city's budget.

"We promised voters we were going to build a bridge," City Council member Ed Oakley said. "If it comes back a second time, and we still can't afford it, we go back to square one" with Mr. Calatrava's team.

Ms. Suhm said cost concerns will not derail plans for Mr. Calatrava's second bridge at Interstate 30 - though the fate of a third bridge at Interstate 35E remains unclear.

Meanwhile, "the city of Dallas has to decide how much of a bridge they want," Mr. Johnson said.

E-mail eramshaw@dallasnews.com and thartzel@dallasnews.com
  Caption:
PHOTO(S): (Hillwood) Santiago Calatrava of Spain designed a bridge to take the Woodall Rodgers Freeway extension over the Trinity River. Bids opened in June were twice what was expected.
Edition:  FIRST
Section:  METRO
Page:  1B
Copyright 2006 The Dallas Morning News
Record Number:  1180480992