The process for soliciting bids for the South Beach Pavilion concession allowed little time and involved a council member's relatives.
By JENNIFER FARRELL
Published June 4, 2004
CLEARWATER - The city allowed just 19 days for bidders to prepare offers on the food, retail and cabana rental lease for the South Beach Pavilion.
Normally, Clearwater allows at least a month for responses. In fact, for the previous nine invitations to bid, the city gave a minimum of one month for five projects and more than four months for four others.
Because the current lease holder on the South Beach Pavilion is council member Hoyt Hamilton's father and the high bidders on the new contract are Hamilton's brothers, the timing has raised questions about favoritism.
Ken Hamilton said Wednesday that he and his brother, Wade, did not receive special treatment from the city. And Hoyt Hamilton has said he will not discuss or vote on the matter when it comes before the City Council in two weeks.
But members of the business community have criticized the city for rushing the due date on such an important - and lucrative - city property at the expense of fair play and ample competition.
"I think this is a big mistake on the city's part," said Michael Frangedis, who bid with his partner for the beach concession. "This RFP should have been put out a long time ago."
City records show revenues for the concession were $870,103 in 2003, and on May 10, the city issued a Request For Proposals to operate the concession, with responses due May 28.
On May 16, the request was advertised in the Tampa Tribune.
City Manager Bill Horne said the city had expected to complete most of the plans for Beach Walk, a curvy redesign of S Gulfview Boulevard, that would eventually do away with the pavilion.
As that project lagged, the expiration of the contract loomed on June 30.
Rather than close the concession, Horne said, the city opted to trim the response time.
On Thursday, Horne acknowledged the city flubbed the timing, but blamed a long list of competing priorities.
"I don't know what to tell you," he said. "There are a lot of things that we're dealing with. It just may not have gotten that kind of attention until it did, given everything else that we're doing."
City Attorney Pam Akin said this week that the city is not required to invite bids to lease city property; rather, the city could simply select a vendor. Instead, she said, the city opted to request proposals to avoid any perception of impropriety, given the Hamilton family's involvement.
"We had to be very upfront and make sure that it was bid," she said.
Likewise, there is no formal requirement that the city give 30 days for bidders to respond, according to city officials.
Vice Mayor Frank Hibbard said more time would have been preferable, but the number of responses proved the city had allowed a sufficient window.
"Six picked up packages and three returned them," he said. "That's a pretty good number compared to what we get on most things."
In fact, Horne said, the city typically receives about three bidders per project.
But with more time, Frangedis said, more people might have applied.
"The more bidders, the more competition," he said. "Competition is great for everybody."
The South Beach Pavilion, in particular, should have been put out to bid several months before the lease expired, according to Frangedis.
The Hamilton family has operated the concession since its inception in 1969. They own the equipment and have more than three decades' experience running the business.
"For anybody it's a high risk to go in there if they don't know what it's doing," Frangedis said. "This should have been done six months prior to give people enough time to make a logical decision."
On Monday, all three bidders are expected to make public presentations to the city.
On Thursday, the Hamiltons asked for permission to amend their proposal after learning they made a mistake in their bid to win the three-year lease. In their proposal, the Hamiltons offered to pay the city $7,500 per month for food and retail and $1,000 per month for the beach rentals. They also offered 15 percent of gross for revenues of $75,000 to $150,000 and 30 percent of gross for revenues greater than $150,000.
What they meant, though, was for the gross revenue percentages to apply only to the beach rentals, which make up roughly a third of profits. A letter to the city Thursday from their lawyer, Harry Cline, blamed a typographical error for the blunder.
A provision in the RFP package states that the city will not accept corrections of errors or omissions after proposals are submitted.
