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City recommends CMAR negotiations with Wharton Smith for two new water plants, outlines regional stormwater and easement plans
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Summary
City staff recommended negotiating a construction-manager-at-risk agreement with Wharton Smith for the Pollard Road and Cypress Wood water production facilities, described a regional stormwater pond for the Intermodal Logistics Center and Polk Regional Water Cooperative easements, and discussed capacity, permitting and procurement approaches including CMAR versus design-build and P3s.
City staff told the Winter Haven City Commission they plan to begin negotiations with Wharton Smith for a construction-manager-at-risk (CMAR) contract to deliver two new water production plants at Pollard Road and Cypress Wood.
Gary Hubbard presented project details: drilling of wells for both sites is underway (two wells drilled at Pollard Road and two at Cypress Wood), the two plants will require additional treatment compared with the city’s existing Upper Floridan withdrawals, and Hubbard estimated the new facilities could be permitted in the range of 5.0–5.5 million gallons per day. He said the Polk Regional Water Cooperative contribution to the city’s water mix is about 1,500,000 gallons.
Hubbard also described an Intermodal Logistics Center regional stormwater pond planned adjacent to Logistics Parkway that would serve industrial pads, the new Pollard Grove water-treatment plant, and future residential development west of the site. He said that with average rainfall assumptions (50 inches/year) the eastern side of Logistics Parkway would generate about 600,000 gallons per day that the city aims to capture and, in future phases, pump back to the water resource facility for reuse.
The city manager (name not specified in the transcript) and staff reviewed project-delivery options (hard bid/low bid, design-build, CMAR) and outlined the financial structure of CMAR agreements, typically including preconstruction services fees and a construction management fee expressed as a percentage of total cost. The city manager described CMAR as a middle-ground delivery method, saying it offers collaborative value engineering and a path to a guaranteed maximum price; he characterized it informally as a “Goldilocks approach” for large, complex projects.
Staff recommended authorizing negotiations with Wharton Smith to execute a CMAR agreement that would include preconstruction services and a construction management fee; Wharton Smith was identified in the request-for-proposals evaluation as the selected contractor. The transcript shows discussion of anticipated management-fee ranges (examples cited: about 4.5% on earlier projects; another PRWC CMAR had an 8% fee), but no finalized fee percentage was presented.
Staff said easements for the Polk Regional Water Cooperative transmission system would be established on the Bennett property the city acquired, and that permanent and temporary construction easements would be placed to support transmission and a future roadway connection (4th Street to Logistics Parkway); staff gave an October 2028 target for that work to be operational.
The commission discussed procurement tradeoffs and P3 (public-private partnership) approaches later in the meeting; staff emphasized that the city has used different delivery models on previous projects and that the CMAR approach is preferred for large, complex work.
