Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Merry Pier operator: Bid process was unfair

The winner will pay nearly double what was being paid, but will he also bring large dinner boats there? No, both he and the city say.

By PAUL SWIDER
Published January 15, 2006

ST. PETE BEACH - After operating Merry Pier for years without having to win the contract, Chris Turner feels wronged by the city after his bid lost to competitor Dan Peretz of Dolphin Landings.

"This whole bidding process was slanted against us," said Turner, the vice president of Pass-a-Grille Bait and Tackle, which has had the contract on the pier for 16 years. "We were met with opposition. The decision was made months in advance."

Turner said the city's request for proposals was geared toward his competitors, not him, and that another bidder, Yacht Star Ship Dining Cruises, was selected second to Peretz to ease a partnership between the two that would bring large cruise boats to Merry Pier. He also said Peretz's bid was credited for offering services Turner didn't include in his own proposal because he already offers them.

"It sounds like we're a bunch of crybabies, and maybe it is," he said, "but they kept changing the rules around on us."

The city's leisure services director, Mike Whelan, said the process was consistent, fair and objective and resulted in excellent proposals from everyone.

"There were five good, strong proposals," he said. "We knew we were going to have four that were not going to be happy."

Whelan presented the proposals to City Commission members Tuesday and told them that, on all criteria, he felt Peretz presented the most comprehensive package. The commissioners pressed him about rumors of a large cruise boat and he invited Peretz to reassure the commission.

"I don't have any plans to put a large dinner boat down there," said Peretz, who has run cruise and charter trips from behind Dolphin Village since 1986. Peretz said there might be special-occasion trips but that he would seek approval for those and would guarantee no added disruption. "I feel I've demonstrated over the last 20 years that I'm a good neighbor."

Whelan said Merry Pier cannot accept a boat like the Star Ship without major modifications that would require city approval. "He seems to be very easy to work with," Whelan said of Peretz, known as Capt. Dan."Money was not the only criterion. It had to be a good fit for the community, and he seems to fit best with the Pass-a-Grille culture. He's a consensus builder."

Money was the motivation for bidding the contract in the first place, said City Manager Mike Bonfield. Turner and his colleagues were paying $27,000 a year to use the pier in what Bonfield said he considered an underused fashion.

"It was not generating the kind of revenue it should," Bonfield said, adding that he's heard some complaints about the pier's operations. He said the goal is not to make Merry Pier a high-traffic business, but to get appropriate value from it. "I know it's worth more than $2,000 a month."

Turner said his bid was worth more than Peretz's and pointed to a typographical error that suggested he would pay less than the nearly $50,000 a year Peretz will. He also said the city has prevented him from making improvements and didn't notify him of the bid process until he found out on his own, and that awarding the contract to Peretz would give Capt. Dan "monopoly" power over charters in the city.

Whelan and Bonfield said they notified Turner of the bid process when they extended his lease more than a year ago. They said there are plenty of other docks from which charters can operate, so there would be no monopoly. They also said Turner has never contacted them about improvements to the pier. They conceded the typo, but said their calculations were accurate and that income was not the only consideration.

"Everybody had an opportunity to put their best foot forward," Bonfield said. "We had to pick somebody."

From Merry Pier, Peretz will operate dolphin-watching cruises, charter boats and a ships store, but will add an information center and a weather station with an interactive Web cam. He said he will also add a Marine Research Experience Cruise, as well as other educational features including touch tanks containing wildlife. He also said he will shuttle kayakers across busy Pass-a-Grille Channel to Shell Island rather than have them rough the chop on their own.

"There are going to be some changes down there," Peretz said. His lease runs for five years but can be renewed as many as three times for five years each, if the city chooses. "We want to work with the neighborhood and build on what's been there."

Turner concedes he can't prove he was the victim of wrongdoing by the city. He added that it wouldn't matter anyway.

"It's all speculation on my part," he said. "But there's no way I'd sign a contract the way the city runs these things. There's no way I'd agree to what Dan agreed to."

[Last modified January 15, 2006, 01:47:20]