The City of Lathrop has received bids for the widening of Lathrop Road and the rehabilitation of Harlan Road.
And now it will be up to the Lathrop City Council to decide whether to accept one of the three offers and move forward with formal plans that have been completed since April and on the city’s radar for much longer.
The Lathrop City Council will decide the fate of the project on Monday, June 19 at 7 p.m. at Lathrop City Hall – located at 390 Towne Centre Drive.
Of the three bids received, Teichert Construction came lowest at nearly $5.69 million to beat out Knife River Construction by almost $150,000. Bay Cities also submitted a bid for $6.45 million.
The Harlan Road portion of the project, if approved, will include the repaving of nearly 5,000 centerline feet of the road that one of the worst grades assigned in the city’s pavement management system. The first section will be 3,500 centerline feet of Harlan Road between Louise Avenue and Nestle Way, and the second will overhaul 1,500 centerline feet of Harlan Road between Roth Road and Slate Street.
With a 10 percent contingency set aside for potential cost overruns, the city is requesting $6.26 million – covering the $1.88 million for Harlan Road and the roughly $3.8 million for the widening of Lathrop Road. Money for both was included in the 2016/17 budget, but staff is requesting that $600,000 be moved from one account to another to help free up finances.
And the Lathrop Road project is going to be a tricky one.
According to the staff report, the contractor has been specifically asked to avoid doing any work in front of the home on the 500 block of Lathrop Road that the City of Lathrop is attempting to acquire from the property owner. Last week the Lathrop City Council declined to take action on a request to initiate the eminent domain process, and will instead revisit the issue at a later date. The only way that work on the frontage of that specific property will take place is if in the contractor receives a contract change order for that parcel, and staff is requesting to allow City Manager Steve Salvatore to execute an initial contract change order to prevent construction from taking place on the homeowner’s private property.
In order to minimize the number of parcels that would require acquisition, city staff reconfigured the specifications of the plan and cut the number of homes that would be affected from 16 down to only three.
Of those three parcels, two of the landowners have already reached a sale agreement with the City of Lathrop, and negotiations with the property owner of the third have not been successful.
That homeowner, Adriana Lopez, has stated publicly at council meetings that she’s not only against giving up a portion of her yard for the project, but oposses the project as a whole out of fear that it will drive up tractor-trailer traffic and bring the heavy load of traffic even closer to her home.

To contact reporter Jason Campbell email jcampbell@mantecabulletin.com or call 209.249.3544.