My unsolicited, no-nonsense advice to the high-level Vero Beach city staffers who are currently preparing a new, more-demanding Request For Proposals for the much-anticipated development of the Three Corners property?
Leave no opportunity for the City Council – particularly, the three overmatched members who embarrassed us last time – to again botch what should’ve been a slam-dunk approval of a spectacular plan that was sure to take our community far beyond its collective imagination.
Creating a dining, retail, social and recreational hub on the mainland’s waterfront is a massive undertaking for a city of Vero Beach’s size, and we can’t afford to allow the amateurish antics of elected officials to undermine the recommendations of knowledgeable professionals, as they did last month.
Therefore, you cannot deliver to council members a process that gives them the wiggle room to manipulate the all-important developer-selection phase by deliberately and dishonestly ranking superior proposals lower, merely to assure the plan they favor wins.
You must stay with your plan to eliminate a repeat of any such shenanigans by tweaking the process – so that a yet-to-be-formed Selection Committee would interview only the development groups that submitted the three best proposals, then recommend to the council only its top two choices.
To avoid the controversy that surely would accompany another split decision, you should also suggest council members require a supermajority when they vote to select a Three Corners developer.
You might need to recommend even more extreme measures to prevent this potentially magnificent project from being derailed again by a council member’s politically motivated recusals for concocted reasons, or indirect-but-curious business connections to one of the development groups, or bogus and unverifiable claims about public sentiment.
The stakes are THAT high.
You cannot allow this process – unlike the previous one, which spawned an animosity that drove a wedge in our already-divided community – to become a popularity contest decided by who shows up at City Hall, or sends emails to council members, or participates in easily manipulated online polls.
Those numbers are not, in any meaningful way, representative of what the larger community wants.
While we’re on that topic: You also should seriously consider writing into this second-chance RFP a clause prohibiting development groups from using social-media platforms, professional marketing efforts and advertised rallies at local breweries to promote their proposals and spin public opinion in their favor.
This isn’t a political campaign.
Besides, the submitted proposals, which again will be made available for review on the city’s website, should speak for themselves. You can be sure they’ll get plenty of coverage by the local news media, too.
In the meantime, please make sure you educate council members on the difference between using tax increment financing (TIF) to fund development projects and appropriating taxpayer dollars from the city’s budget.
Clearly, there was a noticeable lack of understanding the first time around, when it became obvious that at least one council member didn’t quite grasp the concept of TIF – or conveniently didn’t want to.
Either way, we can’t have council members again making wrongheaded decisions on a project of this magnitude, simply because they’re confused about funding sources.
Nor can we give the development groups the benefit of doubt when it comes to the cost estimates in their proposals.
To that end, it was encouraging to hear City Manager Monte Falls say last week the updated developer-selection process will include a “constructability appraisal,” which will be conducted by an outside consultant hired to make sure the estimates included in the proposals are accurate.
This appraisal, he said, will be done in addition to a separate review of the development groups’ financial capabilities – especially their abilities to fund their proposals – by PFM Financial Advisors, the same consultant the city used during the process it abandoned last month.
“We want to make sure the numbers the developers are using are accurate and make sense, so that we’re comparing apples to apples,” Falls explained, adding, “That didn’t happen last time.”
Last time, Indiana-based Clearpath Services provided more comprehensive and realistic cost estimates in its proposal, which, at $500 million, offered more than twice the financial investment included in the plans submitted by the other three development groups.
The ambition and projected costs of Clearpath’s proposal alarmed three council members – Tracey Zudans, Taylor Dingle and Vice Mayor Linda Moore – who favored the allegedly safer but still-evolving $189 million plan submitted by the Pompano Beach-based SuDa, CREC Capital, Madison Marquette partnership.
It didn’t matter that the Clearpath plan was strongly recommended by the Selection Committee, or that the council members’ concerns were unwarranted, given that any questions about the group’s ability to fund its proposal would’ve been answered during negotiations with the city.
Councilman John Carroll, however, described Clearpath’s proposal as “almost perfect,” basing his assessment on 40 years of engineering experience, which he also used to successfully push for the disqualification of the “all smoke and mirrors” SuDa plan last month.
In the weeks since the council’s June 7 vote for a do-over of the developer-selection process, Carroll has made several recommendations to city staffers regarding the revamped RFP, insisting on the independent constructability appraisals.
“We can’t just take people’s word for their estimates,” he said.
Mayor John Cotugno agreed, saying, “We’ve learned from our previous experience and we’re making the process better. We’re adding more expertise and taking a more fact-based approach. At the same time, we’re removing as much of the subjectivity as we can.”
That’s why, Falls said, the new RFP will include elements that all proposals must address in some detail.
Those elements include: replacing the bulkheads along the property’s waterfront; construction of parking facilities for both patrons and employees; identifying specific funding sources and whether their plan includes grants, TIF and/or temporary rent forgiveness; and providing preliminary environmental reports that address permitting requirements.
“We want this RFP to cover all the things we know need to be done,” Falls said, “that weren’t specifically spelled out in the first RFP.”
The new RFP is expected to be finalized next week and presented to the council at its July 23 meeting. If approved, Falls said the city will begin advertising early next month. Developers will be given 120 days to submit their proposals, with the deadline expected to be in early December.
In addition to contacting the nearly 60 potential developers on the list compiled by Colliers International – the consultant used to market the initial request last fall – the city will publish its RFP on industry websites.
“Council members wanted to provide the opportunity for other developers to respond, beyond the four who submitted proposals last time,” Falls said. “At this point, we don’t know if any or all of the previous four will submit again.
“We hope they will, and we expect at least some of them will, but nobody has told us whether they will or won’t,” he added. “They’re probably waiting to see what’s in the new RFP.”
Actually, City Attorney John Turner did receive an email from a lawyer representing the Suda group, which, apparently, is interested in responding to the new RFP – but with an impossible-to-ignore condition.
In his June 26 email, attorney John Shubin not only demanded “written confirmation” that the city will not prohibit any member of the previous SuDa team from participating in the coming RFP process, but he also wanted a guarantee that the group’s earlier disqualification “will not be considered” in evaluating its new proposal.
Council members voted at a special-call meeting on June 7 to disqualify the SuDa group because one of its representatives violated the terms of the RFP by attempting to directly contact them only hours before their May 28 decision.
Shubin’s first demand is irrelevant, since the council told SuDa representatives at the special-call meeting the disqualification would not preclude them from responding to a future RFP.
There’s no way, however, the city can give assurances regarding the council’s mindset, especially with three of the five seats on the November ballot – before the RFP deadline.
For Shubin to even make such a demand reeked of arrogance, but it was consistent with the tone of his email, which also referred to the “numerous legal challenges currently available” to SuDa.
In fact, Shubin closed his correspondence with a threat, warning that if the city didn’t comply with SuDa’s demands, the group’s “focus and resources will go towards vindicating its rights and pursuing appropriate legal remedies, instead of planning and working towards the best possible plan for the Three Corners project.”
Threatening litigation is probably not the best way for a developer – one that already has skirted the rules once – to endear itself to members of a selection committee, city council or community.
As for the Clearpath group, front man Randy Lloyd said last week he and his partners haven’t ruled out responding to the city’s new RFP and were in a “wait-and-see mode,” though he admitted the council’s conduct during the earlier process “left a bad taste” in his mouth.
It should have: Council members provided no legitimate reason for abandoning that process, which, according to the RFP, should have moved forward with Clearpath – the runner-up in their developer rankings – replacing the disqualified SuDa group in the city’s negotiations.
“We were thinking that if we did everything right and played by the rules, the process would win out,” he said. “I guess the saying is true: No good deed goes unpunished.”
Lloyd, however, said he would not go to court to force the city to abide by its now-discarded RFP, because he saw no point in getting bogged down in a lengthy legal battle with a community he loves.
“I still like the project,” he added, “I still see it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
That’s what Clearpath offered us – a mainland waterfront destination that would create excitement for generations to come – only to have a shortsighted City Council majority turn a dream into a debacle.
The new RFP can’t let it happen again.
