At Tuesday night's meeting, Columbia Borough Council awarded a $2.2 million contract for soil stabilization at the former McGinness airport to Iron Eagle Excavating in Lancaster. The company submitted the low bid of $2,196,104.60, which was significantly lower than the original estimated cost of $3.03 million for the project. Diamond Materials LLC submitted the high bid of $5,136,442.00. Bids from five companies were received.
Bid Tabulation
Council President Heather Zink said the borough will be responsible for paying back only about $1.2 million of the cost, because $880,000 is covered by a BIOS (Business in Our Sites) grant.
Soil stabilization represents Phase 1 of development, aimed at bringing the site to "pad-ready" condition. The work will focus on removing problematic materials from the ground to ensure a clean foundation. Engineer Derek Rinaldo said there is a substantial completion date of November 15. "It's a 120-day contract and we will be issuing notice to proceed on July 17th," Rinaldo told council.
Borough Manager Steven Kaufhold said officials will hold a public meeting at the Columbia Fire Department building at 10th & Manor as the project gets underway. "Within the first two weeks of July, we're going to have a meeting with all the residents," Kaufhold said.
Background
The McGinness Innovation Park design team, which includes ELA Group, ECS, and Rick Breneman, recently secured the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit approval necessary to begin the soil preparation work. Engineering firm C.S. Davidson prepared the project specifications and managed the bidding process.
Engineering assessments have found issues at the site, according to Jason Best of ELA Group and Derek Rinaldo, the borough's engineer who has overseen the project since its inception. During the February 25, 2025 council meeting, Best described the scope of the problem as including "deleterious materials, including whatever junk was buried through the course of all the flattening for the runways years and years ago." According to a borough legal notice published in LNP/LancasterOnline (10/13/22), "the site has been found to be contaminated with metals which has contaminated soil on the site."
According to Rinaldo, the southern runway was built with improperly compacted fill material that was "just dumped,” creating what he characterized as "fluffy soil" with compaction levels that are "all over the place."
Remediation will involve stabilizing the ground to support future buildings through a multi-step process. Teams will sift contaminated areas to remove materials that don't belong in the soil, while buried organic matter such as trees will be chipped on-site rather than transported elsewhere. [Note: Officials have been using the terms "stabilization" and "remediation" interchangeably.]
The future of the project
The future of the park project is in question, however, since council is still unsure what it wants to do with the property when remediation is completed. At the February 25 meeting, council discussed selling the property immediately after remediation, though doing so could present complications due to the BIOS grant and loan the borough obtained, as
Columbia Spy reported
HERE.
Once remediation is completed, the borough may move forward with obtaining permits for infrastructure. Zink said officials will work on site development plans over the winter. "Who knows what a developer will want to locate there,” Zink remarked.
Mayor Leo Lutz advised selling the property as a blank slate, before any infrastructure is placed there. “Sell ‘em a blank slate. Put the shingle out, and sell it,” Lutz said.
Council hires project manager for an additional $50,000
Also at Tuesday's meeting, council approved the hiring of Rick Breneman of Breneman Site Construction to oversee the stabilization project. Breneman has been a member of the McGinness design team since the beginning.
In a letter to Columbia Borough Manager Steven Kaufhold, Breneman provided an estimate of services at $125/ hour, for a total cost of $50,250, as shown below:
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