VIDALIA — Plans for the next construction phase of the Vidalia Port may have to be scaled back after the lowest bid for the project came back nearly $4.5 million over estimates.

Bids for the project — which officials broke ground on this month — were opened this week, and the apparent low bid from Womack and Sons Construction Group came in at $11.99 million.

Other bids — from Riverside Construction in Vicksburg at $12.5 million and Continental Construction Company at $14.4 million — were even higher.

The estimate for the project, adding a conveyer system and barge loading facility meant to handle bulk dry products, had been approximately $7.5 million.

Concordia Economic Development Executive Director Heather Malone said she anticipates the project will have to be rebid, “based on what we need instead of what we want.”

“We are going back and going through the value engineering process, looking at what our options are,” Malone said. “We are going to look at some of our other funding sources we have to see if we can pull this project together with additional funding sources.

“We are also looking at if we can potentially reduce some of the design while still having an operational facility but maybe cutting back on some of the items we had proposed in the bid documents and the designs.”

Once the economic development team, port director and engineer figure out the best option for the project, it will be presented to the port commission and to the Vidalia Board of Aldermen.

Port Director Wyly Gilfoil said some of the plans that could be altered included removal of a tank a customer had requested be built but that wasn’t absolutely needed and reducing the moorings from being able to handle two barges at once to only one.

“Those are a couple of things we could do that wouldn’t impact the entire efficiency of the project,” he said. “We hope to have a better feel for that in the next two weeks.”

A second set of bids, for waterline construction work, were seemingly in line with the $219,450 estimates.

The apparent low bidder for that portion of the construction was Womack & Sons at $183,495.

Gilfoil said that bid was under review by the project engineer, but he expected a recommendation to move forward on that portion of the project would be given to the board of aldermen.

Funding for the $39 million, 145-acre port includes a $1 million grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration; a $215,000 grant from the Delta Regional Authority; a $1.5 million federal appropriation; $15 million in capital outlay funds from the state of Louisiana and $13 million through the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development’s Port Priority Program.

The Town of Vidalia has provided approximately $2 million in matching funds.