MTA Construction & Development opened bids October 30, 2025, on contract A36203, and nine general contractors showed up. J-Track LLC was the apparent low at $25,869,015. The job: a gut-level repair of the 9th Avenue station on the West End Line in Brooklyn — new track slab, new track, new traction power, and structural fixes to a station whose scope list reads like a leak chase.

Railroad Construction Company Inc. sat second at $28,642,320, which is 10.7 percent off the low — real daylight, not a photo finish. FOS Development Corp came third at $29,723,000. The middle of the tab was heavyweight territory: Paul J. Scariano Inc. at $32,684,000, Navillus Contracting at $35,583,000, Judlau Contracting at $36,361,630, and the El Sol Contracting/ES II Enterprises joint venture at $36,533,000. Technico Construction Services bid $38,761,050, and Zaman Construction Corp. topped the sheet at $40,549,960. Nine bidders on a transit station job is a healthy field. A 10.7 percent gap at the top says J-Track priced this work harder than anyone chasing it.

What the low bidder signed up for, straight from the MTA's solicitation notice: track slab replacement, track replacement, traction power replacement, signal work, plumbing, spall repairs — chipping out and patching concrete that is letting go — plus crack repairs, water remedy, waterproofing, structural repairs, and painting. The contract runs 600 days, is 100 percent MTA-funded, and was advertised in the $10 million to $50 million range, with participation goals of 15 percent MBE, 15 percent WBE, and 6 percent SDVOB. It was also bid A-plus-B: price and schedule together, so the fastest credible plan counts alongside the cheapest one.

The station this fixes is the D train's front door to the West End branch. The 9th Avenue station sits at Ninth Avenue and New Utrecht Avenue on two island platforms — the first stop after the D comes off the Fourth Avenue line at 36th Street, and the gateway to every West End station south of it, through Bensonhurst and out to Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue. For riders in southern Brooklyn, this is the railroad that carries them to work in Manhattan and the Bronx. A sound slab, dry structure, and fresh traction power at 9th Avenue is what keeps that ride moving. Leaking, spalling concrete is what slow zones and weekend shutdowns are made of.

On opening day, none of that $25,869,015 was a sure thing. An apparent low is a reading, not a ruling — the MTA reviews every tab for responsiveness and responsibility before anything gets signed.

This one held. The MTA's 2025 awards list shows A36203 awarded to J-Track LLC on December 26, 2025, at $23,482,015. The award figure sits below the opening-day number because of the A-plus-B math: the number that ranks the bids folds in a dollar value for the promised schedule, and the contract gets signed for the construction price. The job is not alone out there, either — the same awards list carries a $45,900,000 column-base repair contract along the West End Line and a project-management consultant contract covering the line's infrastructure work. The MTA is putting real money into the West End structure, and 9th Avenue is one piece of it.

One number the tab doesn't show at a glance: the full spread. Zaman Construction's high bid of $40,549,960 sat $14.68 million above J-Track's low of $25,869,015 — the top of the field ran about 57 percent over the bottom. That's a wide field for nine general contractors pricing the same drawings, and it says the risk on gutting a live subway station — unknowns behind the walls, phasing around active track, working over a running D line — gets read very differently shop to shop.

The plan-holder list runs deeper than the bid tab. MTA's own Contract Documents Holders List had at least 46 firms holding plans and specs on this job as of October 6, 2025 — weeks before bidding closed — more than five times the nine that ultimately turned in a prime number. Most of the rest is the sub and specialty-trade side of the job: electricians, painters, an abatement contractor, pricing their piece to feed a prime rather than chase the whole contract.

One more mark for the record: this bid date didn't move once, it moved at least three times. MTA's own Contract Documents Holders List shows the due date starting at September 24, 2025, pushed to October 9 by September 22, then to October 21 by October 6 — before landing on October 30, the day the tab that put J-Track on top finally opened.