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Bruce Whitsell, left, grounds and events supervisor for Missouri Western State University, and Brian Harrah, the university’s building supervisor, record bids Tuesday afternoon. Fourteen construction companies submitted bids for the Kansas City Chiefs’ practice facility.

A high-profile building project at Missouri Western State University brought out a record number of builders, one of whom bid more than 10 percent below the estimated building cost.

Fourteen contractors submitted bids Tuesday to build the future indoor practice facility for the Kansas City Chiefs, with a low base bid coming in at $9.3 million from Crossland Construction, whose corporate offices are in Columbus, Kan.

Western officials say the numbers look consistent with building costs, which were estimated at $11.7 million. Total project costs, which would include furnishings and other items, is estimated at $13.7 million.

The Chiefs have yet to ink a deal to move their summer training camp from River Falls, Wis., to St. Joseph, but Dave Williams, athletic director at Western, said the talks are “coming along fine.” He wouldn’t speculate when he thought an agreement would be reached.

The project includes eight alternate bids for parking, storage, grandstands, hydrotherapy, partitions and nets, and framing materials, which boosted total project costs by as much as $1 million in some cases. However, Crossland remains the lowest overall bidder at $10 million. Kansas City-based Titan Construction offered the second lowest at $10.4 million.

Western officials will verify the figures and the subcontractors and make a recommendation to the university’s governing board during the next board meeting, scheduled for 5:30 p.m. June 25.

Mr. Williams looked at the spreadsheet in front of him after the bids were read Tuesday and said it’s going to take a while to analyze everything. But he was pleased with the initial numbers, saying it was “very close” to the architect’s cost estimate.

“I think that the bids came in as a result of the competition and the economy,” he said. “I think it’s the perfect time to bid a project of this size.”

One of Mr. Williams’ big concerns is that they were planning the project without contingency costs, which is a reserve to cover the unexpected. And despite most of the bids coming in below the estimated building costs, Mr. Williams said they won’t “assume that (bids) are low or high” at this point.

Ellison Auxier Architects have designed several buildings on the Western campus, including the Chiefs’ practice facility. Ron Ellison, lead architect for the project, said he’d never seen as many bids submitted as he has for the current project.

Bidding was fairly consistent on most of the alternates, except for a pre-engineered metal building frame, which lowered the cost for one contractor by $500,000, but upped the cost for another by $4,000. The bid for partitions and nets showed some variance too, as one contractor came in at $634,000 and another at $35,000.

Construction could begin as soon as July 1.

Jimmy Myers can be reached at jimmym@npgco.com.