The daily newspaper has an in-depth interview with Judge Lacey Collier on his three-year tenure as the chairman of the Community Maritime Park Associates Board of Trustees. Judge Collier doesn’t mince words—not that I have ever known him to do so—on one-time master developer, and not only an employer of the master developer, Scott Davison.
Judge Collier talks about how Davison wanted to move the maritime museum from its waterfront spot and how Davison lobbied the Pensacola City Council in an effort to bypass the CMPA board (something I wrote about last May. Davison later denied he wanted to move the park.)
He talks about how Davison praised the design criteria (for which the CMPA paid $1.6 million), but now doesn’t want to follow it. He also points outthat few of the people who were part of Davison’s original team, under Land Capital, are still part of the project.
Judge Collier also says that the CMPA had been waiting five or six months for Davison to get a performance bond, something that a local contractors told Collier that he could get within 15 minutes (We now know that MPDP had to add Birmingham contractor, Hoar Construction, to its team to get the bond).
He complains about how contract negotiations with Davison that should take 30 days have taken months.
Read the interview.