CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa - Puzzled city officials are working to sort out why bids opened today for the Convention Complex project exceeded a pre-bid estimate of $41 million by $5 million for the project’s general, mechanical and electrical contracts.

Such a disparity did not occur earlier this month when construction bids on the city’s Paramount Theatre project came in at a total of $17.98 million, just over the pre-bid estimate of $17.9 million by the Paramount’s construction manager, Ryan Companies US Inc.

The total cost of the Convention Complex project had been put at $75.6 million and the Paramount restoration and renovation at $35 million.

After Monday’s bid opening at City Hall, City Council member Chuck Swore, who is chairman of the council’s Infrastructure Committee, said it was good news that the apparent low bidders on the Convention Complex project are local contractors as is the case for contractors who submitted the apparent low bids for the Paramount’s general, mechanical and electrical contracts.

Miron Construction Co. of Cedar Rapids submitted the apparent low bid to be the general contractor for both the Paramount and Convention Complex projects.

Contracts won by local contractors, Swore said, come with a “reinvestment factor” because local contractors hire here, spend their money here and pay taxes here.

Even so, Swore was focused more Monday afternoon on why the bids for the Convention Complex’s electrical and mechanical contracts were so out of line with the pre-bid estimates. The city’s construction manager on the project is Frew Nations Group, and Chris Nations, a principal with the firm, said he, too, was puzzled by difference between the actual bids and the estimates. Particularly confusing, Nations said, was that the apparent low bid on the general contract beat the pre-bid estimate even as the bids on the mechanical and electrical contracts were much higher than the estimate.

“That’s just not normal,” Nations said.

Swore, a retired former vice president and general manager at Acme Electric Co. in Cedar Rapids, said bidders saw something in the mechanical and electrical bid specifications differently than the people doing the pre-bid estimates for the city.

Three firms bid on the Convention Complex mechanical contract, with bids ranging from the apparent low bid of $10.68 million from Modern Piping Inc. of Cedar Rapids, to $11.44 million from Ryan & Associates of Davenport and $13.85 million from Bowker Mechanical Contractors of Cedar Rapids. The city’s pre-bid estimate for the work was $7.3 million.

Two firms bid on the Convention Complex electrical contract, with Paulson Electric Co. of Cedar Rapids bidding $8.246 million and Acme Electric Co. of Cedar Rapids bidding $10.324 million. The city’s pre-bid estimate for the work was $4.4 million.

The story was different on the project’s larger general contract, with the city’s pre-bid estimate at $29.3 million and the apparent low bidder, Miron Construction Co. of Cedar Rapids, submitting a bid of $27,087,000. Four other contractors submitted bids lower than the pre-bid estimate. J.H. Findorff & Sons Inc. of Madison, Wis., bid $27.83 million; Knutson Construction of Iowa City bid $28.45 million; Neumann Brothers Inc. of Des Moines bid $28.735 million; and Kleiman Construction Inc. of Cedar Rapids bid $29.07 million.

Nations said his firm would report the bids to the full City Council at the council’s meeting on Tuesday. Swore said he hoped to have a better explanation then for the Convention Complex’s electric and mechanical bids.

Swore noted that local contractors have the luxury right now of bidding on several large construction projects at the same time. Those include the Convention Complex, the Paramount, the Convention Complex hotel renovation, the new library and the Physicians’ Clinic of Iowa building. Swore said some contractors might be focusing their bids and efforts on certain projects and not others.

There was no such startling news on bids opened earlier this month for the Paramount Theatre renovation, where the contractors submitting the apparent low bids for three of the project’s main contracts were local contractors.

They were Miron Construction Co. of Cedar Rapids, with a bid of $6,436,900 plus an incentive up to $30,000 for the general contract; Modern Piping Inc. of Cedar Rapids, with a bid of $2,639,000 plus an incentive up to $15,000 for the mechanical/plumbing contract; and Nelson Electric Co. of Cedar Rapids, with a bid of $2,699,000 plus an incentive up to $15,000 for the electrical contract.

Sound Concepts Inc. of Cedar Rapids submitted the apparent low bid of $824,635 for the theater’s audiovisual system, though the bids for that contract are still under the review by city staff members as are the bids for two other theater contracts, historic lighting and historic plastering and paint.

Two other contracts, for theater rigging and the theater’s orchestra shell, are slated to go to a Minnesota firm if the council approves them on Tuesday along with the contracts for general construction, mechanical/plumbing and electrical.

A contract related to the theater’s organ did not attract any responsive bidders.

In total as they now stand, the nine separately bid contracts on work at the Paramount came in at a price of $17,979,239 or almost identical to the pre-bid estimate of $17.9 million. The estimate for the organ contract is factored in both totals.