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Suit targets procedures for stadium bid awards
Tuesday, August 03, 1999 By Tom Barnes, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
The construction of the city's new baseball and football stadiums received a jolt yesterday, when a lawsuit was filed seeking to overturn a recently adopted procedure for awarding bids to contractors on those projects.
Douglas W. Reed of Shadyside, a lawyer with offices Downtown, is suing the Public Auditorium Authority to force it to stop using bidding procedures approved two weeks ago. The authority is a city-county agency that will own the new stadiums, but the facilities will be operated by the Pirates and Steelers.
Reed, a former district justice, and his lawyers, Robert A. King and Bruce E. Stanley, are to appear in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court at 9:30 this morning to request an injunction to block the new bidding rules, which Reed contends give too much power to the two teams.
The new procedures were used for the first time yesterday to award two major contracts -- $31.4 million contract for structural steel for the football stadium and a $19.4 million contract for steel for the baseball park. A $3 million contract for concrete at the football stadium was also approved.
The lawsuit accuses the Auditorium Authority, among other things, of:
Auditorium authority spokesman Greg Yesko said late yesterday he couldn't respond directly because he hadn't seen the suit. But he defended the new bidding procedures, saying they were done according to a state law passed in June by the state Legislature. He said the procedures will allow the stadiums to be built on time and within their budgets and denied any unfairness in the procedures.
Reed couldn't be reached yesterday, but Stanley said the suit isn't aimed at slowing down the process of building the two new stadiums, which are to open in 2001.
He said the suit is intended to ensure that the bidding process is "a fair and level playing field" on which all interested contractors can compete.
"We certainly hope it won't hurt or delay the construction of the stadiums," Stanley said. "That's not our intent. We just want the auditorium authority to use bidding procedures that we believe are appropriate for publicly funded projects."
Most of the funds for the stadiums are public, either from the state or the city and Allegheny County. The Steelers are providing $76.5 million for their $261.6 million project and the Pirates are providing $40 million for their $252 million facility.
Stanley said it was important that a court hearing be held this morning because of the steel contracts awarded yesterday and because additional contracts -- for heating, electrical and other work -- are expected to be awarded tomorrow.
It's not just the two stadiums that are at issue in the new procedures, according to the suit. The expansion of the David L. Lawrence Convention Center also would be affected. Together, the three projects include more than $500 million in public funds, the suit states.
"Moreover, if left to stand, [the auditorium authority's] actions could affect over $1.2 billion of public monies to be spent in redevelopment assistance capital projects across the commonwealth of Pennsylvania," the suit adds.
On July 19, after the initial bid packages had gone out to prospective bidders and contractors, the auditorium authority changed the bidding rules.
Instead of having bids opened in public, it decided to allow the construction managers for the two teams to open bids in private. Dick Corp. and Barton Malow are the construction manager for the Pirates, while Mascaro Construction Co. and Huber Hunt & Nichols are the joint venture for the Steelers.
Another changed procedure freed the teams from a strict requirement of choosing the lowest responsible bidder, which Stanley said is the usual rule for publicly funded projects. Instead, the teams only have to seek at least three bidders for projects and can choose the one they feel is most qualified.
Also, the "prequalification" process for bidders -- making sure they have sufficient experience and expertise to do the work -- was made "subjective rather than purely objective," according to the authority, with the teams and their construction managers having a major role.
City Councilman Dan Cohen, the only one of the five auditorium authority board members to oppose the new bidding process, complained two weeks ago that the new procedures increase secrecy and decrease public confidence in the fairness of the bidding.
Pirates and Steelers officials were unavailable for comment yesterday afternoon after the suit was filed. Auditorium authority Executive Director Stephen Leeper, who strongly defended the procedures when they were adopted, was out of town and couldn't be reached.
But Yesko said the first round of bids, awarded at yesterday's authority meeting, showed the new procedures are working.
For the steel needed at PNC Park, a $19.4 million contract went to Wilhelm & Kruse Inc. Its bid was lower than the only other bid, $20.4 million from Hirschfeld Steel Co.
But Hirschfeld won the Steelers stadium steel contract, with a $31.4 million bid, beating out Wilhelm & Kruse (at $31.8 million), Havens Steel (at $33.2 million) and SMI-Owen Steel (at $34 million).
The Steelers stadium will have 65,000 seats, considerably larger than the 38,000-seat baseball park.
"Having gone through these [bidding] procedures, both the teams and the authority were very satisfied that we were able to contract for the maximum value and have awarded contracts that are within [stadium] budgets," Yesko said.
"We also have assurances on quality and assurances that the work will be done in a timely manner, within the tight schedule that's been established," he added.
The Pirates want to have PNC Park ready for play in April 2001. The Steelers want their new stadium ready by August 2001.
Yesko wouldn't speculate on whether the lawsuit would delay construction of the two facilities.
"It's too early to say what the impact of the suit will be," he said.
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"Abdicating" its responsibility for oversight of the construction process and its obligation to see that contracts "are awarded free of personal interest, bias and prejudice."