Clay County Commission

Dan Haglund

The project wheels are getting traction with the new Department of Motor Vehicles building in north Moorhead.
The total bid package presented to the Clay County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday tallies $6.448 million.
Dan Kleist, principal construction manager at Gehrtz Construction, and Ryan Weber, project manager at Klein McCarthy Architects, were on hand to update the board in Moorhead.
“We had a lot of bids come in, a really good turnout,” Kleist said. He said the bids came in within 1 percent of the most recent cost estimate submitted to the board for review.
The only cost anomaly differing from the estimate was that the actual site sign was not included in the previous estimate, and that adds another $25,000 to the bill.
On Sept. 12, advertising for bids on the DMV project were let by the Clay County Board of Commissioners. On Oct. 10, those bids were
“We opened these bids last week, and one, there were a lot of bids,” said Commissioner Jenny Mongeau, Dist. 3. “Which I think always fares well for the people asking for the bids. There were several areas in which we saw large savings (underbids) that we are excited about.”
Mongeau wanted to address the physical site of the project, which will be on 15th Avenue North and east of Highway 75, as she said she felt the community has become quite interested in this particular project.
“We looked a long, long time throughout Moorhead and Clay County for the best site to relocate this when we learned the (Moorhead Center) Mall was somewhere we were no longer going to be at,” Mongeau said.
Mongeau said numerous buildings and sites were considered, but that combining the licensing and testing needs in one site, along with making sure larger vehicles could have easy access, were the overriding priorities in deciding on a location.
“This is a really exciting step forward, because we will eventually phase in the state facility as well,” Mongeau said. “I really feel like this is an opportunity to really meet the needs of our entire county with this site, and particularly it is a testing site.”
Commissioner Kevin Campbell, Dist. 4, also weighed in on the exhaustive process of finalizing a plan for the DMV site.
“We did look at several different places within our community and even outside of Moorhead,” Campbell said. “There can be some debate about spending $6 million on a building versus getting something that might be in existence, but just because a building is there and is empty doesn’t mean its right for us.”
Campbelll said some of the buildings were far bigger than needed, and others were aging and would have needed remodeling and/or retrofitting. He said he also heard comments on social media that some people wanted the location closer to where most of the city growth is happening (south side), but he reiterated that the DMV is for the county, not just the city proper.
Campbell also extolled the site’s location on existing county property, which wouldn’t eliminate potential commercial acres from other businesses in the future.
“There’s an awful lot of factors that we weighed into this,” Campbell said. “And it’s for those reasons that I think we’ve got an excellent site.”
Mongeau moved to accept the $6,448,880.14 project bid. Campbell seconded it. The motion was passed unanimously.