Carthage School Board rejects bids for phase 2 of baseball stadium

Apr. 23—CARTHAGE, Mo. — The Carthage Board of Education will act as the general contractor on the McCune-Brooks Regional Hospital Trust Baseball Complex, and install an elevator on the press box at the David Haffner Football stadium.

The board decided at its April meeting to reject two bids from general contractors for construction of the locker room, concession stand, press box and other buildings around the baseball stadium as too expensive.

Dr. Holley Goodnight, assistant superintendent for business for the R-9 District, said the Construction Services Group bid $1.47 million to be general contractor and MacCo Builders bid $1.44 million for the project.

Goodnight said the district has about $1 million in donated funds for the project after awarding a $2,125,000 contract to ATG-Ram Industries to build the turf field and concrete pads for surrounding buildings in February.

A groundbreaking for the baseball field was held March 4 and a naming ceremony honoring major donors was held on April 19.

At the naming ceremony, Superintendent Luke Boyer said the bids on Phase 2 of the project were higher than expected.

"We are working with donated dollars and I feel like there's an extra responsibility to be as fiscally responsible with those as possible," Boyer said. "So after reviewing all our options we determined we could subcontract this out, act as a general contractor ourselves, and complete these projects. We're lucky we've got Dan Hill as our maintenance director, he has experience being a general contractor and we feel like he'll do a great job with that."

Boyer said he still expects the field to be ready for use by the baseball team in the spring of 2025.

The board also voted to award Construction Services Group a $119,700 contract to install an elevator serving the George and Ruth Kolpin KDMO 1490 Press Box at David Haffner Stadium.

A tower for an elevator was installed on the back side of the press box when the stadium was built in 2017, but the district decided not to spend the money on the elevator at that time.

Goodnight said the district recently received an "Area Career Center Operations Grant" from the state of Missouri's American Rescue and Recovery Act money to build the elevator with the state providing 75% of the funds and the district matching with 25%.

Goodnight said the digital media classes at the Carthage Technical Center handle media for the games and some of those students have physical limitations that make it tough to climb the stairs to the press box.

"It's really not accessible if someone has any kind of a disability," Goodnight said. "Plus, some of that equipment they have to take up and down at every home game is pretty heavy, and we feel like it will help the overall success of the program to add the elevator."