By Jim Bloch
After bungling the rebuilding of a pocket park on Military Street and experiencing a two-plus month overrun on the reconstruction of Lapeer Avenue, Boddy Construction is out in Port Huron.
With no discussion, the city council voted unanimously at its regular meeting Jan. 12 to approve the “mutual termination” of Boddy’s $1.04 million contract to rehabilitate the 10th Street Sanitary Pump Station.
Instead of the hometown firm, the city council awarded the contract to Raymond Excavating, of Marysville, in the amount of $1,099,500. Z Contractors of Shelby Township had submitted the high bid at $1,207,500.
City Manager James Freed did not respond to an emailed request for an explanation of the contract termination.
But the council’s unusual 4-3 vote on Sept. 8 to award the contract for the pump station rehab to Boddy seems to have foreshadowed the problems.
Council members Barbara Payton, Bob Mozurak and Mayor Anita Ashford voted against awarding the contract to Boddy, citing their concerns about the pocket park.
Freed defended the company’s work on the pocket park and on the $2.9 million reconstruction of Lapeer Ave. between 16th and 24th streets, which began two weeks late in June and bogged down further as summer turned to fall.
In 2023, Boddy had won the half-million-dollar contract to build a redesigned pocket park on the northwest corner of Military and Water streets, but ran into difficulties, including a structurally unsound canopy and concrete surfaces that did not meet the slope requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The canopy was redesigned to be taller and stronger, and the concrete was repoured.
“We did have some hiccups with the pocket park and Boddy Construction,” said Freed Sept. 8. “There were issues with the engineering and with the contractor. We did avoid litigation and that project is back on track. They’re working very well with us. They’re doing the Lapeer project for us, which is a multi-million-dollar contract. They’re doing a good job there. The project is on time and they’re doing an excellent job.”
Freed said Boddy has done work for the city for 25-30 years. “They’ve done an excellent job on every single project.”
By Dec. 5, Freed had changed his mind. In a press conference held on an incomplete and empty stretch of Lapeer Ave., he said only half of the concrete work had been completed.
The project had been scheduled to wrap up two months earlier.
Freed said that “the gross incompetence of the contractor is unacceptable” and he would seek daily liquidated damages of $1,500 per day, beginning Oct. 3. By Dec. 5, more than $84,000 in damages had been racked up.
By Jan. 13, when the work had been largely completed, the damages had reached $105,000.
10th Street Sanitary Pump Station
“The 10th Street sanitary pump station is located at 2619 10th Street on the southwest corner of 10th Street and Electric Avenue,” said Freed in his Sept. 8 memo to council. “It was constructed in 1950 below grade and rehabbed in 2001. The station consists of three submersible pumps, each capable of pumping 1700 gallons per minute from a 36-foot deep wet well to a 16-inch force main. The station serves a tributary area of approximately 461 acres… The rehabilitation project consists of replacing the three pumps and motors, adding variable frequency drives, new piping, new vault valves, new bubbler system, upgraded electrical equipment and controls and relocating the generator receptacle outside,” plus building and site work.
Jim Bloch is a freelance writer based in St. Clair, Michigan. Contact him at bloch.jim@gmail.com.
