If you’ve been driving up Boulder Street in Nevada City, you may have noticed the construction of a new building on the property that facilitates Nevada City Public Works.
“This is a replacement of the storage building that collapsed in the storm of (2021). We are replacing a building that was here,” said Mark Tintle of MK & Sons Construction, who was hired by the city to replace the fallen structure.
In about four to six weeks, Tintle said, the building will be ready for use and will primarily serve as a storage space for the city’s equipment. The structure will be updated from its previous iteration, allowing for accessibility. It also includes a basement. It will encase about 3,700 feet of space for Public Works.
According to Nevada City City Engineer Bryan McAlister, the building previously served an a lumber barn.
“It’s been about 15 years since we’ve built another structure in there,” McAlister said. “We’re always doing improvement.”
“(The building) is prepared for a ramp, there will be a loading dock, and where the I-beam is there, that will accommodate a crane. And there’s a second level mezzanine and there is also a basement below,” said Tintle.
Construction on the project began around the first of the year, said Tintle, and has seen a few weather-related setbacks. Demolition on the existing structure had already been completed before MK & Sons—which, as the name implies is operated by Mark and his children—took over.
“There’s a contractual deadline on a job like this so we are allowed to take weather days,” said Tintle. “We probably had about 23 weather days—so about a working month of weather days.”
Tintle said he entered a competitive bid on the project, with a price tag of $1.2 million, most of which he said stems from insurance money collected after the original building suffered damage from a 2021 snow storm.
He’s glad, Tintle said, to keep the job local. He lives merely blocks away.
“With prevailing wage jobs, 90 percent of them go to out-of-town contractors,” Tintle said. “$1.2 million stayed here in town. The subcontractor who works here, all the suppliers are local. It was a huge deal in my world. It’s so important to me because it spans five times over.”
To contact Staff Writer Jennifer Nobles please email jnobles@theunion.com.
