Quarry owner wins bid to build rail spur
By Mike Joseph
[email protected]
PLEASANT GAP -- State College contractor Glenn O. Hawbaker Inc. is the apparent low bidder on a partially state-funded contract to build a rail spur to serve the Centre Lime and Stone quarry along state Route 26.
The spur will run along a narrow corridor between two businesses and underneath Route 26 to connect the quarry with the main line.
The prospect of a construction project on a busy highway, and then an active rail line, elicited mixed reviews from the business operators.
"This is just going to be nothing but a nightmare and a dirty mess galore," said Pat McCool, owner of a screen printing business on one side of the corridor.
Little more than 100 yards away, on the corridor's other side, Sanitary Maintenance co-owner Valerie Winter said she doesn't mind at all.
"It's my position that it's the best thing going," Winter said. "I mean, one rail car takes care of four or five trucks. It's good for traffic. After a month, you don't even notice."
Two bids were submitted for the project, which includes construction of nearly a mile of rail bed, excavation into limestone to sink the bed 30 feet below Route 26, and construction of a bridge to carry the highway over the rail line.
Hawbaker, which owns the quarry, bid $2.36 million for the construction contract, and State College contractor HRI Inc. bid $2.82 million at last Tuesday's bid opening by project sponsor SEDA-COG Joint Rail Authority. The authority is an arm of the Lewisburg-based 11-county Susquehanna Economic Development Association Council of Governments.
Construction at the site between Harrison and Witherite roads east of this Spring Township village is expected to get under way next month. Its completion will mark the end of a saga that began about a decade ago with the Hawbaker purchase and plan to renovate long-unused tracks.
Those old tracks pass through the village to connect the White Hall Quarry with the main line on the west side of Pleasant Gap. The tracks have lain dormant since the 1950s, and since then residential homes and garages have grown up in the right of way.
When Hawbaker and the rail authority, which owns most of the tracks in Centre County, announced plans in 1998 to renovate the 85-year-old tracks, residents feared for their property values. Then-state Sen. J. Doyle Corman set out to find another solution.
That solution, according to rail authority executive director Jeff Stover, was to build a rail spur outside the heart of Pleasant Gap with about $1.4 million in a state grant for land acquisition and construction, $102,000 each from the rail authority and Nittany and Bald Eagle Railroad and the rest from Hawbaker.
Stover said he was assured by the state authorities that it was OK for Hawbaker to bid on a state-funded project for the company's own Centre Lime and Stone property as long as the engineering was done by an independent company.
Hawbaker owner Daniel Hawbaker said Monday he would have preferred to make use of his original investment in the old rail line, rather than to pay the difference between the state money and costs of building a new spur.
For that reason, he said, he bid below expected costs in order to maintain control of the project.
"This is not a normal public letting project," Hawbaker said. "This is an anomaly. Our own company's interests are intertwined so deeply that you just can't separate it."
"It's an under-cost bid for us," he added. "Why would I want to pay HRI to do our project? I would have much rather done it through the corridor that we own than the way we're doing it now."
Stover said the rail spur will get some trucks off the highway that Centre Lime and Stone now uses to haul road-building rocks.
"It's basically an economic development project," he said. "We were trying to get this job done many years ago."
By Mike Joseph
[email protected]
PLEASANT GAP -- State College contractor Glenn O. Hawbaker Inc. is the apparent low bidder on a partially state-funded contract to build a rail spur to serve the Centre Lime and Stone quarry along state Route 26.
The spur will run along a narrow corridor between two businesses and underneath Route 26 to connect the quarry with the main line.
The prospect of a construction project on a busy highway, and then an active rail line, elicited mixed reviews from the business operators.
"This is just going to be nothing but a nightmare and a dirty mess galore," said Pat McCool, owner of a screen printing business on one side of the corridor.
Little more than 100 yards away, on the corridor's other side, Sanitary Maintenance co-owner Valerie Winter said she doesn't mind at all.
"It's my position that it's the best thing going," Winter said. "I mean, one rail car takes care of four or five trucks. It's good for traffic. After a month, you don't even notice."
Two bids were submitted for the project, which includes construction of nearly a mile of rail bed, excavation into limestone to sink the bed 30 feet below Route 26, and construction of a bridge to carry the highway over the rail line.
Hawbaker, which owns the quarry, bid $2.36 million for the construction contract, and State College contractor HRI Inc. bid $2.82 million at last Tuesday's bid opening by project sponsor SEDA-COG Joint Rail Authority. The authority is an arm of the Lewisburg-based 11-county Susquehanna Economic Development Association Council of Governments.
Construction at the site between Harrison and Witherite roads east of this Spring Township village is expected to get under way next month. Its completion will mark the end of a saga that began about a decade ago with the Hawbaker purchase and plan to renovate long-unused tracks.
Those old tracks pass through the village to connect the White Hall Quarry with the main line on the west side of Pleasant Gap. The tracks have lain dormant since the 1950s, and since then residential homes and garages have grown up in the right of way.
When Hawbaker and the rail authority, which owns most of the tracks in Centre County, announced plans in 1998 to renovate the 85-year-old tracks, residents feared for their property values. Then-state Sen. J. Doyle Corman set out to find another solution.
That solution, according to rail authority executive director Jeff Stover, was to build a rail spur outside the heart of Pleasant Gap with about $1.4 million in a state grant for land acquisition and construction, $102,000 each from the rail authority and Nittany and Bald Eagle Railroad and the rest from Hawbaker.
Stover said he was assured by the state authorities that it was OK for Hawbaker to bid on a state-funded project for the company's own Centre Lime and Stone property as long as the engineering was done by an independent company.
Hawbaker owner Daniel Hawbaker said Monday he would have preferred to make use of his original investment in the old rail line, rather than to pay the difference between the state money and costs of building a new spur.
For that reason, he said, he bid below expected costs in order to maintain control of the project.
"This is not a normal public letting project," Hawbaker said. "This is an anomaly. Our own company's interests are intertwined so deeply that you just can't separate it."
"It's an under-cost bid for us," he added. "Why would I want to pay HRI to do our project? I would have much rather done it through the corridor that we own than the way we're doing it now."
Stover said the rail spur will get some trucks off the highway that Centre Lime and Stone now uses to haul road-building rocks.
"It's basically an economic development project," he said. "We were trying to get this job done many years ago."
Last edited by bwparker1 on Wed Apr 11, 2007 4:43 am, edited 1 time in total.