Westhampton Beach Main Street Reconstruction Project Will Begin This Fall

Work will begin on the Westhampton Beach Main Street reconstruction project this October, as Village Board members unanimously approved a nearly $11.2 million construction bid at a special meeting on Tuesday.

The bid was submitted by Bove Industries, a contracting firm based in East Setauket, and was the lowest of three bids. The village also received bids from Laser Industries, based in Ridge, and Pioneer Landscaping and Asphalt Paving, based in Commack.

In the bid package made available to contractors in June, the village offered three options. The first option would be to complete the work over the next two offseasons. The second option would be to complete the work in a single offseason, in 2019-20. And the third option would be to complete all the work in the 2020-21 offseason.

Bove Industries, in its winning bid, agreed to complete the work in the 2019-20 offseason, although they had also said they would be willing to complete the work over a two-year span if preferred. Village officials want it completed in the single offseason — and have offered incentives to finish early.

All bids were originally due back on July 12, but village officials extended it by a week to accommodate the interested firms.

Village officials stated in the request for bids that they preferred all work to be done in the 2019-20 offseason, presented as Option B, meaning construction would start at the beginning of October and finish in May.

Work will include constructing two traffic circles on Main Street, one at the intersection of Library Avenue — which would turn that road into a one-way street — and the other at the intersection of Potunk Lane. Other work will consist of burying utility lines and removing telephone poles, and installing new sidewalks, light fixtures and landscaping, all as a way of revitalizing Main Street and attracting more businesses.

Bove and Pioneer were the only two to offer figures for Option B, so the Village Board narrowed its decision to those options. The final decision was an easy one, because Bove’s bid was $4.5 million lower than Pioneer’s, board members explained.

The second option was more expensive than stretching it out over a two-year span, but expediting the work was a priority for the village, officials and residents alike.

“As heard by so many people in the village, the No. 1 concern, hands down, has been timing,” Board member Brian Tymann said at the meeting.

The village would also reward the contractor for finishing the work ahead of schedule. “If they finish the road by December 24, it’s $700,000. If they finish the sidewalks by May 1, it’s another $300,000,” Mayor Maria Moore said. “We want to get it done.”

The Village Board also took steps last month to ensure punctuality. It amended the village’s underground utilities law to impose civil penalties of up to $5,000 per day on utility companies if they work past their allotted time frame. Once the contractor installs underground conduits, the utility companies Verizon, PSEG Long Island and Altice, formerly Cablevision, must then run their lines through the conduits and remove the telephone poles.

The $11.2 million falls within the village’s expected range of costs for that option. Last month, the board approved bond anticipation notes of up to $10.8 million, meaning they were allowed to borrow up to that amount. The village already secured $5.8 million in appropriated funds and grants toward the project, so it needed to borrow only $5.3 million to cover the remaining costs.

Board members took turns reading sections of the resolution at the meeting Tuesday afternoon, which was five pages long because it had to explain a technical irregularity in Bove’s bid specifications that the board waived. The irregularity was due to a misunderstanding of how the monetary amounts should have been presented.

Representatives from Sandpebble, the Southampton-based project management firm, also were present at the meeting.