Punta Gorda announces purchase order to Avant Construction for city hall rehab

The Chair announced that the city awarded a purchase order to Avant Construction to rehabilitate Punta Gorda City Hall, using money from the city’s 1% sales tax fund. The work was described as starting April 2 and finishing no later than July 21.

The announcement, made at the start of the meeting, gave a dollar amount that appears split across two spoken segments in the transcript as “$233” and “$277.” The transcript does not provide a single unambiguous numeric string; staff documents referenced at the meeting should hold the definitive contract figure.

The Chair said the historic portion of the building will be separately reassessed; staff said a contract to Parker Mudgett Smith will be presented to the city council for approval on April 8 to update the 2019 assessment of the older portion of the structure.

City staff did not record a public formal vote on the purchase order during this session. City documents and the council agenda packet referenced at the meeting were the primary evidence for the award and schedule. The board was told the project is moving forward and that the schedule should put substantial completion by late July.

Next steps: start of construction on April 2 and council consideration of the reassessment contract on April 8. The city clerk or procurement office is the likely custodian of the purchase order and contract files; the meeting directed staff to proceed with the procurement and present the reassessment contract to council.