EL President Remembers Misery, But Calls Dunkin’ Donuts Park A Gem
It was August 2016 and those associated with the construction of Dunkin' Donuts Park all seemed to be in bad mood.
For good reason. Construction at the stadium site had been halted, the rhetoric had heightened and the Yard Goats were nearing the end of their nomadic Eastern League season spent on buses and in cramped hotel rooms.
Finally, there was a press conference in Hartford and up to the microphone stepped Eastern League president Joe McEacharn, clearly aggravated with what had been going on.
"We cannot risk 2017 being played on the road, and we're not going to," McEacharn said that day. "The only thing that can happen here, if this stadium is not done, is baseball will not come to Hartford."
Nearly a year later, Dunkin' Donuts Park is up and running in spectacular form. McEacharn reminisced about the tough times and reiterated that the Eastern League was prepared to move the Yard Goats out of Hartford if the stadium was not ready.
"I can't go into too much detail, due to confidentiality and sensitive things," McEacharn said. "The solution was a far-reaching option with no assurance that it would have happened. But it would have involved vacating Hartford on a permanent basis and going somewhere else and establishing an Eastern League franchise there. It was a last option. We had to do anything short of shooting your foot off to be sure that team had a home."
After initially being excited about the stadium project, McEacharn said the Eastern League first became aware of the construction problems in August 2015.
"There were a lot of warning signs. We always knew it was going to be a challenge, but at that time we began to focus in on whether there would be enough time to complete it," McEacharn said. "At that point, there were questions asked, concerns raised and addressed. There were no allegations. There was no jumping up and down. We just pointed out what we felt we inconsistencies with the schedule we'd been provided. We were concerned about bad weather with the winter approaching. I started coming down on a fairly regular basis and each time it became apparent that there were serious problems due to the continual revision of schedules. You could see we were falling further behind and this was even before the economic issues became apparent." Before baseball's winter meetings in 2015, McEacharn traveled to Hartford to get a sense for himself where the project stood.
"I had a heart-to-heart with all of the parties," McEacharn said. "The stories were so off the wall. And they insisted on telling us that everything was still fine, no problem. That's when I knew we were dead in the water. They weren't being realistic. I was thinking, 'Just look around, guys.' Then the bombshell of the economic shortcomings came down. They didn't tell us that at that meeting, either." CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Proposed developer for New Haven’s Strong School under scrutiny
NEW HAVEN >> Same project. Same questions. Same criticism. The Fair Haven community was back this week to respond specifically to whether a proposed developer who wants to remake the Strong School has the financials and track record to pull it off.
The conclusion of a report given to the Select Review Committee for the Strong School by concerned citizens, who did their own vetting, was that David Lazarus of the Park Lane Group, in partnership with Maynard Road Corp., was wanting on both counts.Contributing to the report were a developer, a former banker and an architect, who referenced specific pages in the documents submitted by Lazarus.Several of the estimated 60 people who attended the meeting were reached for comment Thursday.
“Their financial proforma was not compiled to a point where you could make a knowledgable decision to move forward on the project. It is important to have all the figures before you make a decision. There is not enough there,” David Hunter, president and CEO of the nearby Mary Wade Home, said. Hunter, who has been involved in expansion projects at Mary Wade and redevelopment of surrounding homes in Fair Haven, said gettng the paperwork together in a timely manner for tax credits and grants, as planned by Lararus, can be “very challenging” to keep the development moving forward. Hunter pointed to a project in Bristol where Park Lane and Maynard Road signed a deal in 2015, according to news reports, to renovate two schools with completion set for 2016. The community report said at this point it appears construction remains in the early stages. It added that the project seems to be a much better deal for Lazarus than the Strong School and asks, if it is delayed, whether that also would happen to the Strong School plan. Crystal Manning, who lives near Strong School, said the Bristol proposal is listed as an example of work they have done similar to the plan for Strong “It doesn’t count as experience unless you have already done it,” Manning said. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
DOT values expertise over price in rail competition
Connecticut rejected the lowest of five bidders for the contract to operate train service on the new Hartford Line, instead picking the overall top scorer in a ranking system that valued expertise and experience over price, according to scoring sheets released Thursday by the Department of Transportation.
A joint venture of TransitAmerica Services and Alternate Concepts, which was named Monday as the system operator, bid $41.7 million to launch and operate the system for five years. Its price was $10 million more than the lowest of five bidders, but nearly $4 million cheaper than the runner-up in overall scoring, Amtrak.
Five DOT employees with backgrounds ranging from finance to transit operations scored the presentations of the five competitors, awarding a series of numeric scores on technical criteria that counted for 60 percent of the overall score. The other 40 percent was based on pricing submitted in sealed bids not opened until the technical assessments were complete.
“We didn’t want the other evaluations to be swayed by price,” said Richard Andreski, the public transit chief and one of the five judges.
The bidders were judged on factors such as mobilization, which is the process of ramping up a new rail line, the expertise of the management team that would oversee the Hartford Line, and the experience of the companies and their employees in launching and operating a new rail service.
“The split between pricing and technical assessment was a judgment call. While price is important, we didn’t want it to be the primary factor,” Andreski said. “You end up getting what you pay for.”
While Amtrak is the better-known brand, TransAmerica Services is the largest private operator of passenger rail.
The DOT released the scoring sheets at the close of business Thursday after a review by lawyers, and Andreski answered questions about them in a telephone interview Thursday evening. CT Mirror requested them Monday afternoon after Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and DOT officials announced the winner of the selection process at a train station in Walingford.
The names of the judges were redacted from the documents, but Andreski acknowledged he was one of the five. Three of the five judges gave their top scores to TASI/ACI, as the joint venture is known in DOT documents. The other two judges ranked it second. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE