Township of Blandford-Blenheim Council officially accepted a tender bid of $4,089,45.45 for Phase Four of the Princeton Street Reconstruction and Storm Water Improvement Project during its Council meeting on Wednesday, March 5, 2025.
According to the report from Jim Borton, the Township’s Director of Public Works, the project has been in the long term capital plan for several years and while there were some delays initially, the project is underway.
Phase Four will be the last of the major construction in the village and it includes the south part of Main Street and the side streets that are east of the village.
“We received very good bids; we had 28 plan takers and received nine competitive bids. The low bid was Cassidy Construction from London and although the Township or our engineer have not worked with them, they are a well known construction company. We did a thorough reference check speaking with the city of St.Thomas as well as the municipality of central Elgin, and all the reviews that we’ve heard were good, and the clients that have used them in the past, said that they would, of course, use them again on future projects,” said Borton. “Under the financial considerations in our capital plan, we had $5.8 million budgeted for this project and the Cassidy bid came in at just over $4 million …so we’re probably close to a million dollars under what the engineers estimate was and we’re very happy with that price.”
While this last phase of construction will be the largest, Borton said that staff will continue to work with the contractor and engineer to ensure any disruptions are mitigated as much as possible.
When asked when construction will be able to start, Borton said that the information won’t be available until the contract is awarded and staff can speak to the contractor.
Before the vote was taken, Josh Brick, Township CAO, mentioned that there was another bit of good news in the report.
“Part of this report is that there were considerations for the preliminary site work for the future Princeton fire station included within the scope of that tender, so $270,000 of that was included,” he said. “We had bundled those projects together being that they were sort of similar project requirements, and we’re really pleased with the pricing to that effect, it’s come in a decent amount below what the engineer had thought as well.”
Council then voted unanimously to accept the report as information and approve the bid.
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
