Schools
County Road Department to Knock Out OCC Roadwork
Roads portion of new Gateway Building project comes with parking and roadway upgrade, creating loop road around campus
Too high!
That was the reaction of Ocean County officials last year to bids of more than $5 million for a new road and other infrastructure improvements at Ocean County College designed to serve the new $30 million
So county officials went back to the drawing board and put the county Road Department to work making some of the improvements.
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On Wednesday the county’s freeholders are planning to award a $2.5 million contract to Manzo-Maroba Inc. of Morganville for some of the work. Then the Road Department crews will come back and pave a half-mile long section of road and parking lots, all before classes start in September, if all goes well.
County Engineer Frank Scarantino said the in-house work saved about $1 million. Road Department crews cleared 42 acres of the college property for and installed traffic signals on what will be a loop road all the way around the campus, once the new link is completed.
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The Morganville firm is being hired to clear and build stormwater detention basins and install conduits for all the street and parking lot lighting, as well as for security cameras.
That work will begin in the spring and will be coordinated with the contractor putting up the Gateway Building, Scarantino said.
He added that there are new owners and managers of the Manzo-Maroba firm with good references. Their bid was $350,000 less than the nearest rival but he said they assured him the project will be “done on time and on budget.’’ Thirteen other firms bid for the work.
“Without the Road Department’s efforts this could easily have been a $5 million project,’’ said Freeholder James F. Lacey.
The Gateway Building will be located on a hill overlooking to the south of the existing OCC buildings, with the Squire Village neighborhood further to the south.
A 12-foot high board-on-board fence will be erected as part of the work about to begin to reduce the impact of the expanding college on that neighborhood, Freeholder John C. Bartlett Jr. explained.
