The Community Maritime Park Associates board agreed to a Covenant with the Community which promised the park would be the most inclusive project in the cityâs history. That Covenant has been supplanted by the Equal Business Opportunity agreement with the CMPA board and the developer. Is the Covenant being fulfilled as people expected?
PART 1: Commitments made
It was one of the most unique features of the Community Maritime Park when it was presented to the Pensacola City Councilâa feature that wasn’t brick and mortar, but rather an contract with the community that the public-private partnership to build a maritime park on Pensacola Bay that would be a âcatalyst for a better today and tomorrow for the people of Pensacolaâ by becoming one of the most inclusive projects in the cityâs history. That contract was called the âCovenant with the Community.â
The Community Maritime Park Associates, through its initial board membersâUWF president John Cavanaugh, Adm. Jack Fetteman and businessman Quint Studerâand later ratified by the new board members after the 2006 referendum passed, committed in writing:
1. The Board of Trustees selection will be representative of the Cityâs demographic diversity.
2. To establish a Contractor Academy to educate and assist local and minority contractors.
3. All contractors will be sought to help ensure they are representative of the demographic diversity of the city with a particular focus of attracting minority-owned companies.
4. Support services from security to maintenance to accounting, legal and advertising will be representative of the demographic diversity of the community.
5. Every effort would be made to ensure activities such as sporting camps, educational camps and recreational camps will provided to city youth with free or scholarship enrollment to those in need of assistance.
(Read agreement: CMPA_Covenant_with_theCommunity)
For a city like Pensacola that at the time had less than 10 percent of its entire purchases for goods and services with minority-owned companies, the agreement was revolutionary.
It helped persuade the African-American community to support the park referendum. Citywide the referendum passed, 9,684 (56%) to 7,701. It did better in the Districts 5, 8 and 7:
District 5 â Councilman John Jerralds Yes: 1231 No: 900 – wins by 58%
District 6 â Councilwoman Jewel Cannada-Wynn Yes: 1284 No: 679 – wins by 61%
District 7 â Councilman Ron Townsend Yes: 855 No: 544 – wins by 61%
I recently asked Studer about the intent behind the Covenant. He said, âWe wanted local businesses and workers, especially the minorities, to participant and benefit from the millions being spent on the Community Maritime Park.â
The Haas Center for Business Research and Economics would generate a $51 million in payroll for 1,694 employees, with an average salary of $30,000 per worker.
In January 2007, Studer, who was no longer on the CMPA board, emphasized the importance of the Contractor Academy to insure minority contractors got a share of the work.
“What we didn’t want is to have requests for proposals go out and not have smaller contractors capable of bidding,” said Quint Studer (Pensacola News Journal, âMinority contractors seek stake in downtown’s building boom,â 1/21/07)
(Studer later used the Covenant as his model for the remodeling of the old Gussies Record Shop in the Belmont-DeVilliers neighborhood. Napier Construction partnered with May Construction to renovate the building. The leasee is Five Sisters Blues Café, an African-American-owned restaurant.)
The Covenant with the Community was later incorporated into the Contractorâs Academy/Equal Opportunity Benefits Program Agreement between the CMPA and Maritime Park Development Partners.
As the IN reported in the Buzz of the Nov. 25 issue, George Hawthorne filed an official complaint against MPDP regarding the agreement and asked that the company be removed as the project developer. MPDP filed a response and the EBO Committee of the CMPA voted to not pass the issue on to the full the board.
Still there are those in the minority community who believe the Covenant with the Community isnât being followed as it was originally intended. Over the next few days, I will report on this blog what were the commitments made, the complaint by Hawthorne, the investigation by CMPA attorney Ed Fleming and the response by CMPA.
———————————————————————————————–
COMMITMENTS MADE BY LAND CAPITAL GROUP
The Covenant with the Community was a key factor in deciding who would be awarded the contract to build the public sector of the CMP. The contract was awarded in 2008 to Land Capital Group headed by Scott Davison.
When Davison presented to the CMPA board in June 2008, his team, which would eventually become MPDP, consisted of
Scott Davison, Land Capital Group â Lead Executive Development Manager
Brass Real Estate Funds/Magi Real Estate, Rick Rodriguez, Owner/CEO â Executive; Jeff Galt, Lead Financial Executive
Bruce CutrightâProject Manager
The Target Group, Joe Williams, PresidentâMinority and Women-owned business inclusion
Architects: HOK Sports, Martin Dinitto; Spencer, Maxwell Bullock
Bullock Tice AssociatesâCommerical Building Design, Construction Drawings
Nelson-Byrd-Woltz Landscape Architects-Landscape architects
Baskerville-DonovanâLead civil engineer
Engineering and Planning P.C.âTraffic & state entity coordination
Qore Property SciencesâEnvironmental engineering
The Normandy Group, CapMark Financial Servicesâfinancing
Saxet Realty. The Shopping Center Group, NAI Halford, John Carr & Co.âMarketing
Fisher-Brown, Quinn InsuranceâInsurance
BPMâPublic Relations
Al HendersonâPhotography
Scott Davison led the presentation team before the CMPA in June 2008. Two months later his team was awarded the contract. His commitment to the Covenant with the Community helped him win the contract.
In his opening remarks, Davison said, ââEverything we do will be completely transparent. Because this is a public-private development, we want to make sure the citizens, the board and the city council know exactly what we are doing every step of the way.â
———————————————————————————————-
Nearly halfway through his presentation, Davison focused on the Covenant. He identified five key components to the agreement:
⢠Inclusion Policy
Davison said, âThe inclusion policy really means that however the population is represented in Pensacola. If there are 30 percent African-Americans, for example, then they should be getting 30 percent of the work¬, both in construction side and on the operations and management side. If there is eight percent Hispanic in Pensacola then they should be getting that same percentage of work. Thatâs what we are going to strive to do. If there arenât enough skilled people to do that work then we will expand our geographic boundaries looking for enough skilled workmen, and uh, people to handle that inclusion policy.
We have already shown that will embrace inclusion in our reaching out to consultants. We will continue that through construction and operations.â
⢠Contractors Academy
Davison said, âThe Contractors Academy is a huge piece. We will look for ways to fund it through the actual budgeting and then weâve talked about ways to fund it after the project is done with the non-profit organization that we could fund with our profits.
The collaboration with existing education programs, of course, is a given with George Stone, with PJC and with the University of West Florida.â
⢠Bonding and Performance Guarantee
Davison said, âWe will also subdivide the jobs into smaller increments so that subcontractors can get the work and will co-guarantee bonds as well.
⢠Implementation
Davison said, âBut this is a lot of talk. How do we actually implement this? This is what Joe has flown all the way from Chicago for his four minutes to talk about. The main thing here is to include everybody and (smiling) make this, as Joe as told me already, âsustainability, human sustainability.â
Thatâs what weâre talking about here. Not just building sustainability, but human substainability. How do we create something that has long-lasting, persevering impact on this community.
Joe William from The Target Group addressed the board: âItâs wonderful to see such an effort is going to be put in this community.â Our goal is to put together a framework on weâre going to get this thing done. At the end of the day, this community is entitled to know and your Covenant mandates that you really do have a plan that you can all be proud of as this maritime park comes into play that you really do have something that you can point to and say this helped our community.
âThis Contractors Academy will be a legacy piece.
âWe want to draft an economic opportunity plan that we will want to share with the community upfront so that everybody will see exactly what weâre going to do over a period of time.
âWhen this project gets going, every day there is going to be a job opportunity. Every day there is going to be a contracting opportunity. We want somebody here on the ground that can really respond to that and make that happen for the people who are trying to get that opportunity.
âWe want to make sure this community on an annual basis can get a progress report and really understand what is going on this year.
âThis is supposed to be a community inclusion process. Our job is make sure we set up the framework to make this happen.
⢠Measuring Compliance
———————————————————————————————–
During the Q&A portion of the presentation, Davison answered several questions on the Covenant with the Community from board members.
Q&A:
Jimmy Jones: âIn terms of the Contractors Academy, will there be some upfront funding of this? Itâs really important rather than wait for the 25 percent.â
Davison: âAgain that is going to be a function of the budget. As the budget allows, right now we are about $4 million short so for me to stand up here and say, âYo, by the way, weâre going to fund the academy as wellâ I think that would be premature. Again we do believe weâre going to be able to come up with other sources of funding. I know the city has thought of other ways to do it as well.
âSo as funding allows. To come up a quarter of million dollars a year for the next two to four years until private improvements are done and generating enough cash to keep it goingâI think that is fairly realistic in a $50-$60 million project to find a quarter of a million dollars.
âThe other thing is that some of the grants that weâre going after âand they arenât listed in your list there-actually are for things just like this. So weâre looking for grant money not just on the construction and the improvement side, but we will be looking for grant money to fund programs like the Contractors Academy.
âSo will be making best efforts to come up with the money to do that? Absolutely.
âCan I guarantee that we will have the money right now that we will have the funds to fund during construction? No, I can not.
Bentina Terry: âCould you talk a little bit about the ability to meet any workforce concerns? And I know you just said a second ago that you werenât sure you will be able to fund the Contractors Academy, but the Covenant will still have to be fulfilled. How would you intend to ensure that weâve got an inclusive work environment, a place where we bring in all the diverse aspects of the Pensacola community without the Contractor Academy and meeting all the workforce needs, we think a project of this scale might have?â
Davison: âThe Contractors Academy is really strong in a couple areas with regard to our apprenticeship programs, internship programs, co-ordinating with existing educational groups to bring three different kind of people to the workforce: One would be an unskilled worker who wants to become a journeyman carpenter; Second would be a journeyman carpenter who wants to become a subcontractor and learn how to do that. And Third would be somebody who is already a subcontractor but doesnât have the business skills or experience to grow his business. Maybe he needs back of the house skills or help, etc. Thatâs what the Contractors Academy is really all aboutâhelping those three groups of people. Thatâs the way we see it and thatâs the way we would help design that program and fund.
âHowever, completely separate from that is the inclusion program and thatâs what youâre talking about. And that is simply making sure that the people we have working on the project are represented demographically, the demographic makeup of Pensacola.
âSo what we will be doing is writing our own policies, completely separate from the Contractors Academy. This will be with the help of The Target Group as to what those inclusion policies look like, how we do those outreach programsâagain itâs one thing to talk about it, itâs another to actually turn it into an action item.
âAnd we will actively make sure that our contractors are living up to the guidelines we put out.
âAs far as the availability of 30 percent African-American electricians, for example, are there that many here? Thatâs one of the very first things we would do â we would take an availability survey.
âSo to talk about making a goal of 30 percent carpenters that are African-American or 8 percent Hispanic or 3 percent Asian â without even knowing that they are even here, we canât make those kind of commitments. The very first thing that The Target Group would do is come here and work with some local people, build a team and teach them how to do this and hand-in-hand go out and find out many of these different type of skilled workforce are available in the Pensacola market, then weâd go out in Escambia County, then we would go out in a couple counties past that.
âBut there is only so far you can go. Once you get past Mobile or New Orleans or maybe Tallahassee, you know, an electrician is only going to go so far. A steelworker they might come from Birmingham or someplace else. But the idea is to grow the geographic ring bigger and bigger to try to get to that 30 percent, 2 percent or whatever it happens to be.
âWe would be the one responsible for tracking that and making sure that our contractors are living up to it. And we will be using outside consultants to double check our quality control and assure that we are meeting these guidelines. So it will be kind of a double-checkâOne, we will checking with our contractors to be sure that they are living up to it, making best efforts; Two, The Target Group will be watching our numbers as well.
âAnd again this will be a 100-percent transparent so at anytime the CMPA or the public will be able to access these audits of our workforce on an ongoing basis. Same thing for when the property is up and running. For operations and management weâre going to make the same type of availability for everybody.
âThis is about moving this whole community forward. We donât anyone to be left behind. So we can do that completely independent of the Contractors Academy.
Terry: âI would only suggest to you that the linkage the Contractors Academy and the inclusion was the lack of availability of those folks in the workforce. And how do you build those folks in the workforce knowing that they might not be available, regardless of what youâre trying to achieve? I would suggest to you that it might be more difficult to get to where weâre trying to go if there isnât a component trying to bring people along who may not be there currently. â
Davison: âYou know, if for some reason the Contractors Academy does not get funded, we would be open to the idea of coming up with some interim programsâinternships, apprenticeships, etc.âwhere we can do that kind of inclusion to bring people up to that next rung and next rung. Thatâs goal to where weâre trying to get to so the method to getting there to me is kind of secondary. The Contractors Academy is a great idea and I hope we can get it funded. But if not, we open to using other ideas internally to reach out to people with those types of programs.
When talking about the budget shortfalls, Bruce Cutright, who was introduced as the project manager said : âI also wanted to answer the gap between the Contractors Academy and the project. If we start the project today, what do we do until the Contractors Academy is up and running? One of the things weâve done on other projects, weâve dealt with Dewalt , Black & Decker and many of the tool manufacturersâto talk to them, they send the representatives in. They provide seminars for unskilled labor, for journeymen, for apprentices to train them at their own cost, not any cost to the project in the hope that we will be buying their tools so thatâs one thing. Also when general contractors get on board, we require each of them to have an in-house training program and scholarship program to help people move from labor to skilled labor to foreman to superintendentâ¦and weâve had great success of that. Certainly stop-gap measures we can put in place before the Contactors Academy is up and running.”
Juanita Scott: âOne other quick question, weâve talked about the Contractors Academyâ¦.Have you been communication with the Contractors Academy? Have you done any type of pre-assessment, in terms of where we are now?â
Davison: âYeah, the chairman of the committee and I talk on a regular basis and he gives me updates on what the committee comes up with. Weâve talked about and brainstormed about different ways we may be able to come up with funding now and when the project starts throwing off profits. I am aware of what the Contractors Academy is trying to put together and this project is the thing thatâs going to start it off, to really be the catalyst. Weâve talked about really having somebody on the ground, both the chairman of that committee and Joe and I have talked about The Target Group simply coming in and training people and simply getting them up to speed on what as to happen rather than being here and actually doing it. And lot of that has to do with the Contractors Academy, getting up and going. And so weâve done some preliminary analysis of the pieces that go into it. If you look at our proposal, there are pieces that talk to the targeted groups that weâre going after and how weâre going to do it. Again The Target Group is who weâre looking at to give us the advice on how to implement that. Iâm smart enough to know what I donât know. While the Magi Group has done quite a bit of work with minorities before. Also Bruce Cutright has. Target Group by far is the expert and thatâs why we brought them in to help us figure that out.
Bentina Terry: âJust for clarification he talked with Van Mansker who is the chair of the African-American chamber, Iâve the chair of the committee. I havenât spoken to you.â
Grace Resendez-McCaffery asked about the pr component of the Contractors Academy and how it will reach out to the community.
Davison: âThat is really going to be BPMâs responsibility. They are going to responsible for not only the web design, upkeep and maintenance but she also talked mixed âwhat do you call that? â mixed channel media, where youâve got a lot of people who donât have access to the internet so you want to come up with ways to reach them. So youâve got church groups, youâve got other civil organizations that do have access to the web. Maybe they have downloadable information and applications, flyers and information packets that they can use and distribute. Or maybe we actually go out, the Contractors Academy goes out and approaches these organizations then gives them the handwritten materials. Newspaper, radio, printâthere are lots of ways to get out there. And I think Jane probably has a lot more ideas that I do.â
————————————————————————————————————————————————
The official website for MPDP is http://maritimepark.us/. It does have a EBO Program page, but there are no reports on how well MPDP, its contractors and subcontractors are meeting the requirements of the Covenant or the EBO Program.