McHenry officials approve more than $860K in contracts for former wastewater treatment plant demolition

McHenry City Council approved more than $860,000 in contracts Monday to demolish the former Central Wastewater Treatment Plant, an action that has been on the local government’s to-do list since the facility was decommissioned in 2018.

The plant was taken offline after the South Wastewater Treatment Plant was expanded, according to the Northwest Herald. Now, the 7-acre former Central plant site, located on Waukegan Road by the bank of the Fox River, could be primed for redevelopment as soon as June, when McHenry officials are targeting the completion of the teardown.

The council awarded a contract of almost $113,000 out of the Water and Sewer Fund to the local firm HR Green for construction engineering, project management and environmental services on the demolition project. Another $748,000 out of the same fund will go to Alpine Demolition Services under a separate contract approved by council.

That business, based in St. Charles, will perform the building removal and demolition. It won the contract after the city received nine other bids for the project, including one for almost $163,000 less than Alpine proposed for doing the job. But that low bid, by Fowler Enterprises, was rejected by the city partly because of a lack of history of performance on projects of similar scope, city documents show.

City officials were able to reactivate an old grant application of $525,000 from the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity funding to go toward the demolition project. The city is budgeting about $413,000 out of the Water and Sewer Fund total for the two separate contracts that will carry out the project.

The term of the grant is set to expire in June 2021, so the work must be substantially done and billed out for reimbursement before then, according to a city staff memo to the council.

Soil testing and other environmental work to ensure the property could be redeveloped after the demolition has already been completed through a previous contract, said Troy Strange, McHenry's director of public works. A second phase of of environmental site assessment is set to occur under the latest HR Green contract the city approved Monday, a memo to council shows.

"We are doing that so that when this property is ready to hit the street, any possible liabilities against it that we can eliminate, we have. It will be about as clean as we can make it," Strange said.

Work to get the former wastewater site removed from the mapped Fox River floodplain could be completed by the spring, he said.

"We will have done everything we can to get this property as marketable as possible. Ideally, by June, we are done, it's for sale and that is the end of our obligation," Strange said.

A developer in 2018 toyed with the idea of redeveloping the property with a residential focus, but never submitted formal plans due to the perceived cost of working on the site, according to the Northwest Herald.

Potential plans for the site after the demolition is completed have yet to be pitched.

"Our obligation is to do something with this property, whether it's a public facility or a good project that we do for our city," Ward 2 Ald. Andrew Glab said.

Demolition is set to begin next month, according to the memo.