As most of you probably know — because you have exhibited by your readership and comments here that you care deeply about your community — we had a major development yesterday in the long, difficult slog toward a new, single-terminal airport.
Mayor Sly James, City Manager Troy Schulte and City Council Aviation Committee Chairwoman Jolie Justus announced that the city had issued a “request for qualifications and proposals” (RFQ/P) for design, construction and private financing of a new terminal.
This was like the proverbial dam breaking open…in a good way. Until now, Burns & McDonnell, a local engineering and design firm, was hurtling along at record speed with a proposal to build and finance a new single terminal. At the wheel of the pace car was Sly James, who, until a few weeks ago, had wanted to jam the deal through the City Council in a matter of days.
Gratefully, the pace car has pulled down onto pit road, for refueling at the very least.
Today, all Kansas City area residents can exhale…And we can, and should, thank the “new” Kansas City Star editorial page and the editorial board members for this breakthrough.
It’s only been three weeks since editorial page writer Dave Helling got wind of the Burns and Mac deal and forced the mayor’s hand — forced him to rush down to the editorial board and lay out the framework of the deal he’d been cooking up with Burns and Mac.
Helling’s scoop (you don’t see many “scoops” on the editorial page) was a tremendous public service. If it didn’t slam the brakes on the process, it certainly put a large boulder on the tracks.
Since then, the editorial board has hammered relentlessly at the need for the city to slow down and to solicit proposals beyond that of Burns & McDonnell, which has made bountiful campaign contributions not only to the mayor but to every other City Council member.
The blaring headline on Sunday’s lead editorial cut to the heart of the matter: “Our KCI checklist: More details and alternative proposals needed.”
It went on to say:
We’d like to see a detailed comparison the private financing plan and a traditional public bond plan. And what will the design look like? AECOM (a California company that has expressed in the project), Burns & McDonnell and any other competitor should provide as many options as possible for the council and public to consider.
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That is exactly what a responsible newspaper and its editorial board is supposed to do: Shine a strong light on issues that significantly impact the public, take a carefully considered stance and push like hell for elected officials to do what’s right.
Helling, who has written all but one of the recent, unsigned KCI editorials, told me in an email that not one member of the editorial board was in favor of the city giving the contract to Burns and Mac without seeking other proposals.
…Nothing could be bigger than how the city proceeds on a new airport, which will probably cost about $1 billion. It is the biggest single municipal project many of us will see in our lifetimes, and it can’t be rushed through in a week, or two or three, and it can’t blithely be handed over to a local firm, no matter how qualified and/or well-intentioned that firm is.
I’ve said before I like Sly James and that he has been an effective leader. As a political novice with a first name that most wannabe politicians would eschew, he put together in 2011 the best grass-roots, local campaign I have ever seen.
But on the airport he allowed his frustration at years of being stiff armed to get the better of him. So, he threw down a trump card, and it backfired, triggering a fortnight of public confusion and opening himself up to harsh blowback from longtime critics. At the same time, as I’ve said before, the dust storm that blew up over the Burns and Mac deal has advanced the KCI debate beyond whether or not Kansas City needs a new single terminal. More and more, people are coming around to the realization that it is the way to go…It’s possible our mayor is crazy like a fox.
At any rate, the trump card is now back in the deck. Burns and Mac may still win out, but the public is going to see other proposals and, ideally, get a much clearer picture of three important components of a possible private deal: how much a new terminal will cost, how a private firm and its partners stand to profit, and how much money is in it for a private firm and its financial partners.
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Besides those three big questions, another that has drifted off in the backwash of the Burns and Mac proposal is what the new airport might look like.
On a project of this magnitude, what could be more important, at least initially, than the design?
On that front, I fault The Star and the Aviation Department. The Aviation Department and the airlines have settled on a preferred design, but the city has not produced good, definitive representations. For its part, The Star has published several images of new-terminal and major-renovation options (there are two of each), but I’m almost certain it hasn’t run the preferred option since the Burns and Mac deal took front and center stage.
Last week, the Kansas City Business Journal published a guest column I submitted, and in that column, I said: “What we don’t have is a clear-cut…rendering that is visually appealing and prompts convenience-obsessed KCI fans to say, ‘That looks good, and it could be pretty convenient.’ “
When it comes time for a public vote, possibly in November, whatever proposal is put before the public will rise or fall just as much on an appealing (or unappealing) design as on price and other financial considerations.
With that, let me show you again (I first ran it on May 15) what the city calls NT-A, as in New Terminal-A.
As you can see, it’s in the shape of an “H” on its side. Airport gates — 35 of them — are configured around the top and bottom bars, with a walkway linking the two concourses. (The Aviation Department and the airlines want a terminal that can be expanded to 42 gates.)
The squat, blue rectangle below and attached to the bottom bar of the “H” is the new terminal building. The larger blue rectangle, slightly separated from the terminal building, represents a new 6,500-space parking garage. Below that, in the gray circle, would be a surface parking lot with an additional 1,940 parking spaces.
The circle to the left of the terminal and parking garage represents the existing Terminal B garage, which would be retained, primarily for employee parking.
…This is not an ideal image, by any means, and I don’t pretend that even the most talented campaign consultants could feature it in the election campaign. Last night, I urged Deputy Aviation Director Justin Meyer to develop bigger, better images with arrows and descriptions of various features. In a return email, he said, “We’re working in that direction.”
But even as skeletal as this image is, I can see the possibilities. When I look at it — with the benefit of Meyer’s explication of what is where — my reaction is, “Yes, that looks good…And it could be pretty convenient.”
I’m not going to waste much more time and energy on the airport project because, frankly, it’s turning into a classic Keystone-Cops exercise. Just two quick points:
1) What does this sentence from the RFQ/P mean: “This RFQ/P is not a request for a competitive bid”? Huh? If this isn’t a solicitation for “a competitive bid,” then what sense does the headline on the Star editorial make: “No-bid no more — competition for KCI terminal is a welcome change”? At a minimum, the leaders of this project and the media need to be a lot more precise in the language they use when attempting to communicate what is going on.
2) Firms submitting proposals have a deadline of 4:00 pm, Tuesday, June 20, to deliver 25 copies of their proposals to city hall. Given that this is essentially the close of business on June 20, I assume some (and, who knows, maybe even most) of the proposals won’t be physically distributed to selection committee members and other officials until the next day, June 21. And yet, a full day of “formal presentations” from the firms is scheduled for Thursday, June 22. That’s a totally ridiculous schedule. At an absolute minimum, there ought to be at least a week between the deadline and the formal presentations. Officials need to be given a realistic opportunity to actually read the proposals so they can ask meaningful questions at the formal presentations.
You are so right on the language and terminology, Mark. My understanding is the RFQ/P is not technically a request for bids, as the document itself clearly states. “Bids” is a legal term, I believe, that differentiates them from “proposals,” which are more informal. I believe that when the city solicits bids on a project, the City Charter requires it to accept the “lowest and best bid,” although the “best” part allows for leeway. If the city was running this project and paying for it by issuing revenue bonds, it would request design proposals, settle on one and then put the project out for real, honest-to-goodness bids, and would be pretty much bound to go with the lowest bid.
And yet, even the city’s website says: “The City has now opened up a Request for Qualifications/Proposals (RFQ/P) process to solicit bids from any qualified company. Because the City has opened a competitive bidding process, it has removed the MOU and FAQ specific to the Burns & McDonnell proposal.”
That flies in the face of the line in the RFQ/P that you quoted. I hate to second your Keystone Cops assessment, but, clearly, the city is wading in murky water.
My goodness. I hate to be so cynical, but I may have been too kind when I said this is turning into a classic Keystone-Cops exercise. One can only imagine where things go from here.
http://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article154453359.html
If they don’t build it, they can’t steal from it.
It’s hard to believe but on July 29 (I think), it will mark 10 years since the publication of the Sunday A-1 story that I wrote for The Star about the proposal to make KCI a one-terminal airport. One would think that something would have happened by now.
Wow…That says a lot, Mike. I didn’t realize the idea first came up a decade ago.