School Board terminates Nabholz contract

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

— Nabholz is out and Baldwin & Shell is in as construction manager of the multi-purpose facility for Pea Ridge High School.

That decision, made by Pea Ridge School Board members at a specialmeeting at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday, came after board members were told by superintendent Mike Van Dyke that Nabholz had cut 7,000 square feet off the design and was still over budget and that Nabholz was “a little antagonistic” and was “trying to undermine” working with the vendor of the fabric-structure portion of the multi-purpose facility.

Meeting for the third time in 11 days, on Tuesday school board members expressed a desire for the facility to be constructed in time for 2011 football season.

Board members met Nov. 17 with two representatives from Nabholz Construction and were told thatmarket prices were driving their prices; the overruns were not their own fees.

At 6:30 a.m. Nov. 12, board members met in what was initially billed as a committee-of-the-whole meeting, but was changed to a special meeting, to discuss the choice of a construction manager because theprice from Nabholz was higher than the board had allotted.

The School Board has allocated $2.2 million for the project. Nabholz modified the project and came with a final price of $2.21 million;

however, the school board did not like the proposal because of the size reduction.

News, Pages 1 on 11/24/2010