Confederation Beach Park’s Wild Waterworks retendered slide refurb contract attracts no bids

The Blue Demon and Night Rider will look like they've seen better days for at least another season.

The Hamilton Conservation Authority is shelving plans to recoat the two aging waterslides at Confederation Beach Park's Wild Waterworks this year because no one wants to do the job.

Capital projects director Matt Hall said a second tender for the work came up empty when no potential contractors showed up for an on-site tour or submitted bids by a Feb. 15 deadline.

The authority, which runs Confederation Beach Park and Wild Waterworks for the city, decided to retender the project in September after an initial tender drew a single bid of $563,870, well above the project's $300,000 budget.

The slides were installed in 2000 and last refurbished in 2012, and the original goal had been to complete work by early December.

Hall said authority and city staff agreed to revise the project's specifications, a process estimated to lower costs by 30 per cent, and extended the completion deadline to mid-May.

But that didn't make the project any more attractive, he told directors at their March 3 board meeting.

Hall said the company whose original bid exceeded the budget told the authority it had too many commitments to do the work this spring.

A second contractor who visited the water park after the missing the January tour expressed some concern, in their opinion, that the attraction has in fact reached the end of its lifespan and recommended a full replacement," he said.

Hall said a recent city master-plan study reached a similar conclusion, but the work is cosmetic and the slides will undergo all typical inspections, including by the province's Technical Standards and Safety Authority, before the water park opens this summer.

The park has been shuttered due to COVID-19 the past two summers.

While it would have been nice to have it done, it's not required by a health and safety standpoint," Hall said.

Authority chair Lloyd Ferguson said the tendering's outcome is a victim of the marketplace."

Everybody is booming. Try to hire a plumber now, try to hire a painter, try to hire a carpenter; you can't get them," he said.

It is disappointing that we can't get this done because they do look horrible from the Queen Elizabeth Way and it's sort of a gateway into the city."