An electrical contractor finished ahead of 15 other bidders on the James Monroe campus job in the Bronx. POSITIVE ELECTRICAL ASSOCIATES, INC. bid $19,375,000 for the auditorium and gym upgrades when the NYC School Construction Authority opened bids at 11:11 a.m. on Friday, June 5.
The job is solicitation 26-026761, filed under the High School of World Cultures, one of several schools in the James Monroe campus building at 1300 Boynton Avenue in the Bronx. The tab lists a gymnasium upgrade and an auditorium upgrade, each with its own path-of-travel accessibility work. The SCA's anticipated awards list put the auditorium in its $4 million-and-over bracket and the gym at $1 million to $4 million. It's on our board as RFI-000417.
The top of the tab: POSITIVE ELECTRICAL ASSOCIATES, INC. at $19,375,000; KG Construction Services, Inc. at $19,965,000; Red & Blue Construction Corp. at $21,645,700; AKM Construction Services Corp. at $23,333,001; Infinity Contracting Services, Corp. at $23,996,000. The high bid was NEELAM CONSTRUCTION CORP. at $32,196,000. The other ten came in between $24.1 million and $29.0 million.
Positive beat KG by $590,000, or 3.0%. After that the field thins out fast: third place was $2.27 million behind the low. The median of the 16 bids was $24,664,500, which puts the low 21.4% under the middle of the room. The spread from low to high is 66.2%. The SCA did not publish an engineer's estimate. Apparent low is not an award.
Why would an electrical firm be low on a gym and auditorium job? Look at what's in them. A modern school auditorium is stage lighting, sound, rigging controls and new power, and gyms get new lighting and scoreboards. An electrical prime can self-perform that share of the work instead of buying it from a sub. The tab's Wicks section lists POSITIVE ELECTRICAL ASSOCIATES, INC. as its own electrical subcontractor.
Why this matters. The SCA's prequalified list lets trade firms bid as the prime when they carry the bonding, and on work heavy in their own trade they can be tough to beat. GCs chasing auditorium and gym work should expect electrical and mechanical firms in the room.
What to do next. Seating, stage rigging, flooring, acoustic and finish subs: this job's prime is an electrical firm, so the carpentry and finish scope will be bought out. Get your numbers to POSITIVE ELECTRICAL ASSOCIATES, INC. and keep KG Construction Services, Inc. in the loop until the award. Watch the SCA tab for 26-026761.
Update, Sept. 28, 2026: The SCA's tab now marks POSITIVE ELECTRICAL ASSOCIATES, INC. as awarded at $19,375,000. Forsythe Plumbing & Heating Corporation and Central Mechanical Systems, Inc. are named as its plumbing and HVAC Wicks subcontractors.