Port to Seek Convention Center Bids Once Again

For the second time this year, San Diego port officials voted to seek construction bids for a convention center next to San Diego Bay that up to now has been plagued with problems and delays.

In formally seeking construction bids for the $100-million-plus convention center Tuesday, San Diego Unified Port District commissioners expressed hope that the much-publicized and much-criticized problems that have dogged the project for the last year--and which led to the rejection of all six construction bids in April--are behind them.

“Quite frankly,” Commissioner Bill Rick said in an interview, “we let ourselves get pressured to go out too early on the earlier bid.”

The pressure came from a host of business, tourist and government interests such as the Convention & Visitors Bureau, the Chamber of Commerce and the Hotel-Motel Assn., among others, Rick said.

What that led to was rushing forward with an incomplete and confusing set of construction specifications for the complex building project that caused the lowest of the six initial bids to come in $22 million higher than the project’s $101.5-million budget.

Despite warnings that rebidding the project would further postpone the center’s opening date from mid-1988 to the fall of 1989--a delay ConVis estimated would cost the city more than $60 million in lost convention business--the Port District decided to do just that and was unanimously supported by the San Diego City Council.

Complicating matters were problems with the $5.4-million excavation of the 11-acre site, just south of the Hotel Inter-Continental, which was more than six months behind schedule and would not have been ready even if the construction bids had been accepted.

Not only would that have caused more delays but it probably would have cost the Port District several million dollars in damages as a result of the contractor being forced to wait for the hole to be dug.

Since the rejection of bids in April, the Port District has embarked on an effort to revise the construction plans, seeking to identify cost-cutting areas that wouldn’t substantially affect the design of the building. It hired a construction management company, Fluor Constructors Inc., at a cost of nearly $2 million to oversee the changes.

While the company and an ad hoc Port District committee have recommended many changes--ranging from the color of the concrete to the removal of elevators--it’s now apparent that the expected $10 million to $15 million in anticipated cost-cutting probably won’t be attainable. Some items are now more expensive and there was costly confusion in the original plans.

“There were many inconsistencies (in the original construction plans) that had to be changed,” said Commissioner Louis Wolfsheimer in an interview. “That has eaten into the savings.

“But I still think there will be substantial savings and more and new bidders.”

Neither Wolfsheimer nor Rick, both members of the ad hoc committee, would say how much they think the Port District will save this time around. “I don’t know what we’re going to save,” said Rick. “I don’t expect it (the new bids) to come in a lot higher.”

The true amount of any savings will probably never be known because the true cost of the convention center as it was originally bid can’t be estimated. Both Rick and Wolfsheimer said that although the lowest bid was $22 million over budget, the construction plans were so confusing and the excavation was so far behind schedule that it was a certainty that many extensive and expensive changes in the contract would be required.

“Who’s to say if it was going to be $2 million or $22 million . . . but it would have been a bunch,” Rick said.

One of the center’s most expensive single items is the proposed $7-million tent and windscreen covering 100,000 square feet on the roof. The tent, which the convention center’s architects say is integral to the design of the building, will be part of an optional bid that the commission can either accept or reject depending on the overall costs of new bids.

The commissioners’ decision means that the official advertising of construction bids will be published Tuesday. At that time, contractors will be able to receive the hefty set of construction plans and drawings for the center. The scale of the project is so vast that it’s costing the Port District $86,258 just to print the construction manuals and drawings.

Opening of the bids is set for Feb. 11.