"It's just what shape it's going to be and what's going to be included," Hayworth said Friday after viewing the last of three presentations from contractors interested in building the project to city demands.

One of the most dramatic revisions presented, as the firms tried to stay within the target budget, was a plan to reduce the hotel from nine stories to five. Other proposals changed construction materials or reconfigured components.

Cost became an issue in November after initial bids exceeded city estimates by more than $10 million.

City leaders then began to explore a turnkey agreement, under which Coralville asked builders to agree to complete the project with certain basic requirements then sell it to the city. The agreement would lock the builder into a $48 million construction price at most and a completion date to be determined later.

The Marriott project is proposed for the east end of Ninth Street, anchoring redevelopment of the old industrial park southeast of Interstate 80 and First Avenue.

Detailed proposals were due to the city by Jan. 15, Hayworth said, and city leaders have spent the last three days watching presentations from three building companies with their turnkey proposals. The three came back with proposals to keep the hotel within the $48 million limit, which does not include furniture, fixtures, equipment and administration costs.

The three bidding companies were Ryan Construction and Mortenson, both out of Minnesota, and Myron Construction out of Wisconsin.

Coralville's original plans called for a nine-story, 280-room hotel with an adjoining restaurant and a conference center to include 30,000 square feet of meeting space, equal to six basketball courts. Hayworth said the project should be completed in fall 2006.

According to Hayworth, the proposals took a variety of approaches to saving money.

Ryan proposed removing more than the size of a basketball court -- about 7,000 square feet --of meeting space from the conference center and changing the configuration of the hotel to reduce it to five stories, adding an extra wing and reducing interior hotel space.

Mortenson proposed reconfiguring the layout for the conference center to keep the same amount of program space -- ballrooms, meeting and exhibition space -- but reducing overall space by cutting back on hallways, office and storage space, for example.

Myron proposed keeping within $48 million by using the existing city plan as a base but using different materials and reducing space.

"I thought all of them were being very creative," Hayworth said. "Each one was different and had lots of options and that's why it takes a while to go through and make sure we have apples to apples."

Hayworth said, during the next few weeks, city consultants will review the options each company proposed and try to decide which one is best. A groundbreaking still could be two or three months off, he said.

One drawback to a turnkey agreement is the city cannot start paying off the hotel by issuing new bonds until it is completed. For the contractors, that means ensuring they can cover the cost of building until the city is allowed to pay under Iowa law.

Hayworth said the city could reduce some of that risk by placing the roughly $30 million amassed from bonds already sold into a trust that would go to the builders when they finish construction.
 

Reach Adam Pracht at 339-7360 or adpracht@press-citizen.com.