RAGBRAI may overlap middle school parking lot improvements, school board learns

By Kate Hayden, khayden@charlescitypress.com

New improvements on a middle school parking could have some traffic complications before it’s even ready to open — unless contractors plan ahead for the potential 20,000 RAGBRAI participants in Charles City during the project.

Terry McCarthy of Short Elliott Hendrickson Inc. (SEH) took questions during Monday’s regular Charles City Board of Education meeting as he presented SEH’s proposal for the parking lot renovation bids.

“We are ready to move forward with it, as far as going out for bids, and the intent would be to have (the parking lot) constructed when school gets out,” McCarthy told the board.

Participants in RAGBRAI — the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa — will stay overnight in Charles City on July 26. The school bid documents could require contractors to finish by that date, McCarthy said, “but usually any restrictions that you place on the contractor is one more thing that could drive the price up,” he added.

The project could take around four weeks, McCarthy told the board.

“If they would get started first thing, there’s a good chance it’s going to be done,” he said.

Contractors will have the responsibility to make sure their own equipment is secure, Superintendent Dr. Dan Cox said.

“You’ve got 20,000 people coming to town. There are going to be people everywhere,” Dr. Cox said. “I don’t want folks thinking, ‘here’s another place to park our RVs’ if it’s not open and ready for business, and then wrecking something that we’ve been working on over the summer.”

“If that parking lot isn’t ready for us to use by (July 26), they’ll have two days where they can’t get in there,” board President Scott Dight said.

Contractors are usually restricted within the site limits, McCarthy said.

“It’s going to be a fairly small project area, so I don’t think that that’s going to be a problem,” McCarthy said, but he added, “I assume there’s going to be people around with motor homes, with maybe some of the mobile accommodations that they bring along with RAGBRAI that are going to be looking for places, and I assume your parking lots are going to have folks in them.”

“I think we just advise the contractor … that they’re aware that RAGBRAI is coming through, so there will be a time period there they’ll have to make things more secure,” board member Robin Macomber said. “I’m not going to have the school paying for that. If they want to avoid that, then go ahead and get it done before RAGBRAI.”

That language can be included in the bid before it is sent out to the contractors, McCarthy said.

“We’ll tell the contractor he has to restrict the use of the site to just that site,” he said.