Coeur d’Alene’s Ginno Construction lands Lewiston airport building contract

A Coeur d’Alene contractor has been selected to construct an operations building for $4.32 million at the Lewiston-Nez Perce County Regional Airport.

The airport authority board chose Ginno Construction at its Wednesday meeting.

“Their bid was perfect,” said Dave Mitchell, aviation services manager at T-O Engineers in Meridian, a firm that has done design on the project.

T-O Engineers has worked with Ginno Construction previously and the builder has completed similar work in places such as Coeur d’Alene, Mitchell said.

Two other contractors submitted lower bids but didn’t finish all the paperwork required by the state or the Federal Aviation Administration, Mitchell said.

Northcon of Hayden was at $3.73 million, while NNAC Construction of Coeur d’Alene was at $4.14 million. Northcon had four deficiencies, including not listing some subcontractors, Mitchell said. NNAC didn’t identify its plumbing contractor, which is something specified by state code as a reason to dismiss a bid, Mitchell said.

Three remaining bids, also from out-of-town companies, were higher and also had parts missing, said Airport Manager Stephanie Morgan.

A business undertaking a project like the operations building should be paying attention to details, Morgan said, noting she didn’t struggle at all with the bid recommendation.

“Every single (bidder) had issues except for (Ginno Construction),” she said.

The amount that Ginno Construction bid puts the airport’s share of the cost at $628,255, which it can afford, said board Treasurer Pat Nuxoll.

The FAA is covering 93 percent of the sections of the structure for firefighting and snow removal equipment. The airport has to pay for the remaining 7 percent, as well as a section for administration offices.

The building, which will be ready in about one year, will house a new fire truck the board is purchasing from Oshkosh in Wisconsin for $609,178 in a contract approved Wednesday.

It also will have space for the airport’s existing fire truck that is at least two decades old and is now kept at a nearby city of Lewiston fire station.

Airport administration offices will be moved to the building from the third floor of the airport terminal.

In other business, the board agreed to spend as much as $51,000 on a contract with Hubpoint Strategic Advisors of Davidson, N.C. The firm will complete a number of tasks, such as providing data about new commercial passenger routes the airport could pursue and which carriers might provide them.

“It doesn’t do any good to have the best runways in the world if we don’t have people using them,” Nuxoll said. “… There are possibilities out there that we don’t know about because we haven’t looked for them.”

The decision to hire the contractor comes as the Lewiston airport faces a number of challenges. Horizon Air, one of two commercial passenger airlines, cut a key late-night flight from Seattle and now is grappling with a pilot shortage.