BTi News
- Port Authority Awards Bids on Fiber-Optic Site
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// Dec 8, 2006
With bids awarded Dec. 8, work on the B-Telecom Inc. network operations center in World Trade Park, Leetonia, should begin later this month and be complete by next summer. The project is expected to cost $2 million.
The Columbiana County Port Authority awarded five bids at a special meeting in its offices in East Liverpool:
General contractor: DSV Builders Inc., Warren, $1,152,000, lowest of nine bidders.
Mechanical: York Mahoning Inc., Youngstown, $129,800, four bids.
Plumbing: Komar Plumbing Co. Inc., Boardman, $67,280, six bids.
Electrical: S.M. Electric Co. Inc., Austintown, $162,900, eight bids.
Fire suppression: S.A. Communale Co. Inc., Warren, $36,390, three bids.
Jon Vollnogle, president of Howells & Baird, Salem, reviewed the bids and said the difference between the lowest and second lowest bids was narrow in all instances. DSV was only $15,000 lower than the second lowest bid, he said.
"They were all good bids," the chief executive officer of the port authority, Tracy Drake, said.
Financing for the project was provided by Fifth Third Bank and an Ohio Department of Development Rural Industrial Park loan. "The loans will be repaid by pass-through lease payments from B-Telecom," Drake says.
B-Telecom, the second company to take up residence in World Trade Park, will use the site as its corporate offices and provide a connection point to its 10Gig Ethernet fiber wide area network (WAN) that encompasses the greater Cleveland market plus a fiber-optic network in Mahoning and Columbiana counties that will be operated at the same speed.
The building will have some 22,000 square feet, says Paul Allen, president of B-Telecom. When the building is complete and the systems up and running, B-Telecom says it will employ 50 at the site and "expects additional jobs to be created by third-party information technology and secure data entities."
The port authority also approved a 99-year lease to Salem Logistics LLC that will allow the former Eljer Plumbing plant to reopen. The largest employer in Columbiana County, Black Hawk Custom Plastics, 800 Pennsylvania Ave., Salem, will take 60,000 square feet and use the site to consolidate its warehousing and distribution operations, Drake said.
The first year's lease payment is $250,000 prorated over 12 months, Drake said. The second and succeeding years' payments are $900 a month plus 10% of gross rents collected from sublessors.
Copyright 2006 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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