Lincoln Avenue School fire, demolition bids to restart after appeal

MILWAUKEE - Milwaukee Public Schools will restart bids after it originally chose a much more expensive bid for the demolition of Lincoln Avenue School.

MPS will start the new bidding process next week.

School demolition bidding

The backstory:

In June, fire destroyed Lincoln Avenue School. In July, the city determined the building must be demolished.

FOX6 News reported Monday that the district had originally picked a bid millions of dollars more than a local bid. The district was planning to contract with TW Chicago for roughly $4.8 million. However, Milwaukee-based MRD Group says its own proposal was rejected and was much cheaper, coming in at $928,000.

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MRD Group appeals

What To Know:

The MRD Group officially appealed the district's decision. On Thursday, Nov. 5, MPS said it had agreed to restart the bidding process.

"We just saw that single contract page for the total number, and that's when we said, 'Hold on a second. This is not an almost $5 million dollar job,'" Marcus Dumke of The MRD Group said. "Our bid, we didn't undercut our numbers majorly. We're logistically 10 minutes from the job site, so it makes sense that our bid would be more competitive just due to logistics."

"That's unheard of in the industry, in the trade. That's unheard of for that large of a discrepancy. So our first reaction was, ‘Did we miss something?’ Like, what other scope items was TW Chicago going to be taken care of? But from what we saw in the published documents, it was strictly demolition and the abatement as described in the RFP [request for proposal]," added Dumke.

Response from MPS

What they're saying:

When asked if the process was fair the first go around, MPS Superintendent Brenda Cassellius said: "That would be a question for our Office of Accountability and Efficiency on the appeal."

FOX6 followed up if the superintendent had concerns that the original pick was several million dollars more than another.

"We worked with our insurance company, and so the insurance company was working to pay for that funding. So, that wouldn't have been a loss to the district, just so that the public knows that 4.7 was the negotiated rate with the insurance company to pay that," Cassellius said. "The reason that it is more expensive, though, is because we want to be sure that the immediate community is safe from the potential environmental hazards. We've been putting 24-hour security around the building, making sure that we water and keep all the dust down for the community and safety is our number one priority right here. And being able to do this work is very complex and delicate work when you're dealing with hazardous materials."

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Bidding process

What's next:

The new bidding process will start up next week. MPS says it hopes to decide on the contractor in the first week of December, with demolition starting after signing a contract. MPS says it expects demolition will finish by the end of March.

"It's relieving to us that that appeal process seemed to have worked. It's going out for rebid, and that doesn't mean we're entitled to win it in this next round. We'll have to be competitive, and now that our numbers are out in the news, we're going to have to look at that internally, but we will be preparing a bid response once we see the proposal request," Dumke said.

Portions of this article were formatted using A.I. FOX6’s Jason Calvi and an editor reviewed it for accuracy and tone prior to publishing.