Well shiver me timbers.
In a million years, I would not have guessed that the KCI selection committee would have recommended Edgemoor Infrastructure & Real Estate to build a new single terminal.
Not only did Edgemoor of Bethesda, MD, keep a low profile but it was the only one of the four competing companies that declined to make its proposal public.
So, we, the public, know nothing about their proposal, including what type of design they proposed or how much they bid. (It should all come out in time.)
I think this is a positive development…A release from the city said selection committee members went with Edgemoor partly because it submitted a plan “that would deliver the terminal at the best price.”
That sounds promising, but as I suggested yesterday, this whole thing could still fall apart.
At least two major hurdles remain before we can be sure Kansas Citians will go to the polls on Nov. 7 and determine if a new terminal will be built.
The first hurdle is the full City Council’s review of the selection committee’s recommendation. As disjointed as this process has been, it is foolhardy to assume that seven members of the council will vote to approve the selection of Edgemoor.
Only two council members were on the selection committee — Jermaine Reed and Aviation Committee Chairwoman Jolie Justus. The other committee members were City Manager Troy Schulte, Aviation Director Pat Klein, Aviation Deputy Director of Planning and Engineering Phil Muncy and Aviation Chief Financial Officer John Green.
Some council members, including a few who backed Burns & McDonnell, might be looking to derail the committee’s recommendation.
The second major hurdle is development of a memorandum of understanding between the city and the selected company. That memorandum is going to be complex and lengthy — probably well over 100 pages — and it’s going to take several weeks to put it together.
All the while, the clock leading up to Election Day, Nov. 7, will be running, and the longer it takes to jump both hurdles, the less time the campaign consultants will have to convince the public to vote “yes.” An earlier survey showed that only about 38 percent of Kansas City voters would vote for a new terminal. A source told me tonight he had heard that a more recent survey now put the “pro” side at 42 or 43 percent.
If that is accurate, I’m glad to hear it, but I still think gaining voter approval will be a tortuous battle.
Here are some of the pieces that will have to fall into place for the proposal to pass.
:: The business community will have to step up with campaign contributions in the range of $500,000.
:: Edgemoor will have to move quickly to convince the Kansas City Labor Council that it will provide plenty of local jobs. (The labor council had been in lockstep with Burns and Mac and is probably as confused as everyone else at this point.)
:: Every significant voting bloc, such as Freedom Inc., the firefighters union, the Committee for County Progress and the Citizens Association, will have to endorse it. Freedom Inc., the city’s leading black political organization, will be in a particularly enviable position because it will be able to extract just about whatever concessions it wants and will be able to demand payment of tens of thousands of dollars to help finance its get-out-the-vote effort.
:: Voters will have to look past the ragged selection-and-recommendation process and be convinced the city is 1) getting a good product for its money and 2) that the terminal will be convenient and appealing.
Finally, it will be important — although maybe not vital — for Burns and Mac to swallow its pride, bury its resentment and embrace the new-airport proposal.
From the outset, Burns and Mac officials talked about how proud they would be to build a new terminal for the city they love. They were fairly busting their buttons…They realized too late it was a huge mistake to have plotted with Mayor Sly James and a couple of other council members to engineer a no-bid, sweetheart contract that would produce a huge profit for the company. (It’s ironic that James has now been reduced to little more than a bit player in this drama.)
“It was a political miscalculation of unprecedented proportion,” a source told me tonight.
Burns and Mac’s original proposal was such a scam, he said, that “Tom Pendergast would have blushed.”
Now that Burns and Mac is in a totally different role than what it expected, its civic dedication is going to be sorely tested.
And yet, I’ve heard Burns and Mac could still be in for a piece of the action. Word is that Edgemoor, if it gets the job, might bring the company on board for at least part of the engineering work.
That would certainly help get Burns and Mac representatives out of the grousing mode and back into their cheerleader outfits.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Labor Day has passed so forget about trying to get this on the November ballot.
Yeesh!
On your blog back in May, I wrote that this process reminded me of the Keystone Cops. In hindsight, that was very unfair to the Keystone Cops.
At this point, none of us can predict with any certainty where this project is going, except for this: In the very near future, there will be yet another development which will make us say “I didn’t see that coming” or “How in the world did we get into this mess?”
Perhaps the next huge “I-didn’t-see-this-coming” will be voters narrowly approving a new terminal.
All indications are it’s going to be on the ballot and that Edgemoor pulled off a tremendous coup. Hats off to them. I see Burns and Mac’s contrail fading in the sky.
Dan — Can you elaborate on the “Yeesh!” ??
I just don’t understand what is to gain by pressing the “hard” reset button as some have suggested. What is the city going to gain by starting all over? I suppose the city council could may look more organized and transparent if they start over but who knows. The fact of the matter is KC is whiffing on such an important asset while other cities take the cake.