Port District Set to Open Convention Center Bids

The San Diego Unified Port District is on the verge of the most important financial decision in its history--and it has nothing to do with the America’s Cup.

On Wednesday, construction bids for San Diego’s much-touted bayfront convention center will be opened--again.

This time, officials are hoping to avoid the anguish of 11 months ago, when a similar set of bids were unveiled, revealing a low bid $22 million over budget.

Coming after delays of more than a year, officials were mortified.

“What went wrong?” they asked. The search for answers began almost immediately.

A special mayoral task force was formed. The Port District investigated. Local media--from newspapers to radio talk-show hosts--scrutinized. The center’s architects were examined.

The answer was embarrassing.

Because of several last-minute design changes during the final stages of the bidding process, the design specifications were incomplete and thus confusing, a Port District ad hoc committee determined. In addition, excavation of the site--at a cost of more than $5 million--was unfinished, troublesome and behind schedule.

As a result, officials assumed that the bids were inflated as a hedge against unexpected expenses and construction problems. Given the likelihood that costly contract change orders would have been necessary, Port District officials now say they would have been lucky if the project came in only $22 million over budget.

“The public interest demands that we admit that there was confusion, that there was haste . . . when bids went out the first time,” said Bill Rick, the Port District commissioner who headed the convention center ad hoc committee.

Despite pressure from the local tourism industry and downtown business leaders, who lobbied vigorously that the project should proceed because of the millions of dollars in convention business at stake, the bids were eventually rejected by the Port District.

Today, officials are much more confident, though not effusively so. Their confidence is based on a complete review of construction specifications for the center.

In the aftermath of last year’s bids, the Port District hired Fluor Constructors Inc., at a cost of $2 million, to help review and revise the specifications and to act as construction manager once actual construction begins. It was a move that critics said was long overdue.

The plans are now considered streamlined and complete. “They are in really decent shape now, and I feel much, much better,” said Port Commissioner Louis Wolfsheimer.

“The plans have been subjected to independent criticism by the Fluor staff, and we didn’t have that before,” Rick said. “Last time, we had a chaotic condition . . . today we’ve got 900 sheets of (construction) drawings instead of the 2,400 we had last time.”

Architectural and design changes range from simplifying the design of interior and exterior landscaping to simplifying the concrete paving patterns for walkways and the exhibition-area decks. Other changes include the removal of some elevators, structural changes and things like modifying exhaust and fresh-air intake stacks.

As a rule, the changes are considered technical and not very likely to be missed by conventioneers.

In late summer, officials from the Port District and Fluor estimated that the changes would lead to savings of about $10 million to $15 million at the 11-acre site, just south of the Hotel Inter-Continental.

By November, Port District officials admitted that reductions of that magnitude probably weren’t attainable. Some construction items had increased in price; other potential design changes were considered integral to the building’s look; some items had been left out altogether and had to be put back in, and inconsistencies in the original plans ate into other expected savings.

Port District officials were skittish last week about commenting on what price they think bids will come in at, saying they didn’t want any of the four known bidders to misconstrue their statements and change their bids.

But one is left with the impression that, while officials are hoping the low bid will come in under last year’s $123.9 million, they would be satisfied if the price remained the same.

What is clear is that the commissioners are under great pressure to begin construction.

“It’s accurate to say we’re anxious to get started,” Wolfsheimer said.

Al Reese, an official with the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau, said that the “pressure from our standpoint is to come up with a firm opening date . . . that the convention market will recognize as valid.”

“Our problem now is that groups are very reluctant to book anything in 1989 (the year the center is now scheduled to open), and we can’t assure them otherwise,” he said.

Because of the center’s delays, Reese says that 26 groups have canceled their conventions, which he says is about a $54-million loss for the city. In addition, 34 more conventions that were tentatively scheduled to use the center also have canceled, he said.

The original cost of the center in 1983 was placed at $95 million. The estimate later increased to $125 million, including the cost of construction, architectural fees, furniture, fixtures, equipment and excavation.

The budget for the actual construction of the approximately 1.7-million-square-foot facility with a 2,000-car underground parking garage is slightly more than $100 million.

Wednesday’s bids will consist of two parts. The first is the main bid to construct the center. The second is an optional bid that consists of prices for both an electric and natural gas air-conditioning system (the city prefers natural gas) and the cost of a much-debated, Teflon-coated set of tents atop the building.

The distinctive, high-pitched tents were designed to cover a 100,000-square-foot rooftop patio considered the complement to the center’s main, 250,000-square-foot exhibition hall, which will be big enough to hold six football fields.

The center’s architects have defended the tents and their ancillary windscreens and trellises--estimated to cost $7 million--as the feature that will make the San Diego convention center unique and convey the city’s image as a warm-climate destination.

The tents “provide San Diego with something truly, truly unique . . . it sets us apart from the herd,” San Diego architect Ward Deems, one of the center’s main designers, said recently.

But Mayor Maureen O’Connor, who embarked on a fact-finding tour of convention centers in several cities last year after the initial bids were opened, doesn’t want them.

The mayor--who has no direct control over the decision to fund the center--would rather scrap the tents for now and use the money to help pay for expansion of the main exhibit floor, which she and others say will be too small to compete with other facilities when the San Diego center opens in about May, 1989.

“The mayor’s feeling is that there will still be the opportunity for the tents later, but they ought to be delayed at least until the opening,” said Paul Downey, the mayor’s press secretary.

Because the tents are part of an alternative bid, the Port District can either accept or reject them without affecting the main construction bid.

Once the bids are opened Wednesday, the Port District staff and Fluor officials will check them for accuracy, making sure they are complete, have acceptable levels of insurance and bonding, and include minority contractors. That could take two weeks.

If there are no problems, the formal bid would be awarded in mid-March, with on-site construction starting two to three weeks later.