By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
There is a roughly $400,000 gap between what has been raised to build a new library in Cranbury and the low bid from a construction company vying for the job.
The shortfall is not considered fatal, but it will mean further delays in starting a project many in the community have supported. Officials had hoped to break ground in September.
In all, 17 companies submitted bids, with all them coming in at less than $4 million, said library director Marilynn G. Mullen by phone last week. She said the high number of bidders showed there was “lots of interest in the project.”
So far, more than $2.6 million has been raised for a project that is not in jeopardy, Mullen said in pointing to the wide public support.
“We have over seven hundred people that have donated, and that’s a big part of the community,” she said. “And I think there’s a lot of people behind the project and I don’t think that they’re going to want to see it die, really, because there’s so much community support for the project.”
She pointed to a construction bond act for libraries, on the ballot in November, as a funding source. If approved by voters, matching state funds would be handed out starting with “shovel-ready” projects, she said.
In the meantime, Mullen said library officials plan to go to the Township Committee, on Aug. 14, to tell officials what the bids were and where things stand with the project.
She said a question she gets often is why the town is not putting in more money or is not helping push the project across the finish line. She said her answer is the town is giving the land for the building and doing the site work.
But in looking back, Mullen said there were delays in getting approvals from the town to get the project off the ground, during which time prices rose. She said officials thought the project would go out to bid in February, at the latest, but even that timing was thrown off.
“If we could have done this in 2015, it would’ve been less, or even 2016,” she said.
