Fall bidding for Alviso Adobe Fall bidding for Alviso Adobe (July 30, 2004)

City waiting for favorable bid climate

Alviso Adobe Community Park is designed and ready to go to bid, city landscape architect Mike Fulford told the Parks and Recreation Commission at its last meeting.

Fulford said he expects the 6-acre project to go out to bid in September or October.

"The construction documents are completed," he said. "We are waiting for a more favorable bidding climate. It's about 15 percent out of whack, due to a blip in the cost of steel."

The project has been out of the public eye after the city nixed plans for a silo on the Foothill Road site two years ago. Neighbors at that time attended meetings en masse to protest the potential decline of their property values if a silo were erected to commemorate the dairy period.

The $3.3 million community park will restore the old Alviso Adobe, built by Francisco Alviso in the 1850s, as well as build a replica of a dairy barn to be used as an interpretive center. The park will cover three eras of the location's history: the Native American period, the Californio period, and the dairy period.

In November 2002, the City Council approved a contract with Pattillo & Garrett Associates, now called PGA Design, to plan the project, and a kickoff meeting was held in January 2003 to discuss construction documents. The construction document package has been submitted to city staff, said Fulford.

Construction is scheduled to begin in spring 2005. -Dolores Fox Ciardelli

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