Loop trail bids in; city buys Forrest flood ground

Sealed bids were opened Oct. 20 for Phase 1 of the Luverne Loop bike bath, and Henning Construction, Adrian, submitted the low bid of $439,694.50.
The only other bid was from Duininck Inc., Prinsburg, for $597,223.60.
City Council members took action at their Tuesday night meeting to award the bid to Henning for Phase 1 of the Loop.
This portion of the trail will start at the pond behind the Minnesota Veterans Home, cross Highway 75 and proceed west along the Catholic Cemetery and Tonto Park to James Street.
Here, it will proceed on the flood control berm along the west edge of the city behind Northview Drive south along the school property to Dodge Avenue.
 
Forrest ground purchased for $10,000 per acre
This portion of the path, between James Street on the north and Dodge Street on the south, involved eight acres of land purchased from Loren Forrest for $80,000.
Conveyance of this subdivided property from Forrest to the city was also on Tuesday night’s City Council agenda.
According to City Administrator John Call, the city had initially hoped to secure easements from Forrest for the bike path. “But it ended up being a negotiated deal where we ended up buying the property,” Call said.
Forrest said he wasn’t interested in negotiating an easement with the city for several reasons. Among them was liability.
The non-farmed property was used as a flood control berm that was built in the 1990s. It was designed to hold back floodwater northwest of the city and release it slowly through a 48-inch underground pipe.
“There’s a hole back there that the floodwater runs through, and if a kid gets in that hole, he’ll get sucked down,” Forrest said.
He said another reason he preferred selling the ground was that he’s been unhappy with the land deal arranged 16 years ago with the county.
“The dam was never supposed to be on that property, and they used my dirt to build it and said they’d settle up later,” Forrest said. “Well, later happened, 16 years later. … Now I get rid of all my liability and everybody’s happy.”
As part of the Phase 1 construction, a fence will be built along the trail to remind users to stay safe and not to trespass on adjacent Forrest property.
The path connects with Dodge Street near the school bus garages where the city recently purchased land south of Dodge Street from Burdell and Julia Kruse.
In that deal negotiated in July, the city paid $80,000 for 6.59 acres, which included the Kruses’ stock of Sioux quartzite boulders in their Rock County Prairie Stone.
Forrest said the Kruse land price was what he used as a basis for his asking price.
“They offered, I made a counter offer, and we ended up somewhere in between,” Forrest said about the $10,000-per-acre price he received for his flood ground.
While the Forrest land purchase was not initially part of the anticipated costs for Phase 1 of the Loop, Call said the project is on task to stay on budget.
A $150,000 state grant will help bring the cost down to $370,000 from Henning’s $440,000 bid.
“It’s still in the same window of cost where we started,” Call said.
“It gets us out to the school property out there. … To run a bike path on city streets isn’t what we had in mind. … This is a beautiful area back there for the trail to go along an agricultural fringe.”
Phase 1 work on the trail will begin next spring with a completion date of June 30, 2016.