News file photo

ALPENA — Northeast Michigan Materials Management Authority (NMMMA) received only one bid for their new building project, according to Executive Director Bailey Barr, adding an additional $500,000 to $700,000 to the expected cost.

He said that the total cost includes the construction of the building and the purchase of new equipment.

Barr told The News that NMMMA received one bid for the project from Devere Industrial, LLC for $3.8 million. He added that “there will be more costs that will come with that,” and likely will total closer to $4 million. Barr said the authority will cut unnecessary parts of the project bid to make up for the shortfall.

“No matter what, we will get the price down so we can issue the bonds,” he said. “It wasn’t over too much that would make it impossible to cut.”

According to Barr, NMMMA is allowed to issue a maximum amount of $1.6 million in bonds to go towards the project. He said that NMMMA will likely issue those bonds in January 2026.

Barr explained that NMMMA will meet with Devere Industrial, LLC to “break every single piece down in the bid” to get exact prices. From there, he said that NMMMA will evaluate what items they “won’t need out of the gate” and save those for a future date. Once they reduce the price of the project, the authority can release the bonds.

Though the bid was open statewide, Devere Industrial, LLC was the only one with the bandwidth to take on the project, according to Barr.

“The other bigger companies in Alpena didn’t have enough availability next year that would allow what this project would take,” he added. “We want this done in December of next year.”

Barr stated that the construction of the building “will take quite a bit of labor” to complete.

This bid award is just another step in the process for NMMMA to complete the construction on their new recycling building. Prior to the construction bid, the authority had already secured a bid for new equipment.

At the NMMMA board meeting in September, The News reported that the authority awarded a Request for Proposal (RFP) to MachineX, a materials management equipment company based in Quebec, Canada. The total bid, which accounted for tariffs, equalled $2.1 million. As part of the award, NMMMA was required to pay the company a down payment of 10% of that final cost.

At the meeting, NMMMA treasurer Rachel Smolinski, told MachineX representatives that before the authority could cover the down payment, they would need to issue the bonds for which they were approved. She added that they would need to know what the cost of their site construction was before issuing bonds.

Kayla Wikaryasz can be reached at 989-358-5688 or kwikaryasz@TheAlpenaNews.com.