The City of Savannah voted to award the construction manager contract for the new Savannah Arena to AECOM Hunt at Thursday’s City Council meeting.

The $11,166,016 dollar contract to AECOM Hunt, an Orlando-based company, includes managing and sub-contracting the construction of the new Savannah Arena. With a projected cost of $140 million dollars, AECOM Hunt is charged with selecting local businesses to sub-contract projects from dry wall to railing installation.

AECOM Hunt will work with the design firm Perkins + Will to design and construct the planned 269,000 square-foot Savannah Arena. The site selected for the Arena is located on city-owned property near the intersection of Stiles Avenue and West Gwinnett Street.

“The residents have expressed their desire to see the arena built as soon as possible,” said Peter Shonka, the City’s Arena Project Executive Director. “City staff is working extremely hard to get our project management teams under contract as quickly as possible to make this arena project happen.”

The method of procurement used for this contract was the request for the proposal (RFP), which evaluates criteria in addition to cost. The criteria evaluated for this RFP were relevant firm experience, team experience and qualifications, project understanding, approach to project management, Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) participation, local vendor participation, and fees. The City received three proposals from nationally-known firms.

AECOM has proposed 25% of the arena contract will be sub-contracted to local and disadvantaged businesses. With the Arena project projected to cost $140 million, disadvantaged and local businesses will have the opportunity to compete for an estimated $35 million dollars of sub-contracted arena construction projects.

The City hopes to have the Savannah Arena under construction in mid-2019 with preliminary site clearing beginning as early as this winter.