Firm Vows Fixes at Park-and-Ride
City officials pulled back from a threat to remove Tutor-Saliba Corp. from a park-and-ride construction project near Van Nuys Airport on Monday after the company’s president promised to fix numerous problems on the site within 30 days.
The Sylmar public works giant has made some improvements at the site since the city took legal action on March 10, demanding that the contractor comply with several conditions or face removal from the project, officials said Monday.
“Everyone would admit, that in the last few weeks, things got much better on the site,” said Kim Day, interim executive director for the city’s airport agency at an Airport Commission meeting.
The year-old project has been plagued by shoddy workmanship, substandard materials and violations of city building codes, city records show. Tutor-Saliba repeatedly failed to correct problems cited by city building inspectors, including issues that compromised the structural integrity of a five-story parking structure, according to reports by the project manager.
The structure is an expansion of the Van Nuys FlyAway, a 29-year-old park-and-ride facility next to Van Nuys Airport. Tutor-Saliba also is building a terminal on the site.
On Monday, Ronald N. Tutor, the company’s president, said he would do everything “humanly possible” to ensure construction defects in the parking structure are addressed in the next month.
“We’re doing everything we’ve been directed,” Tutor said at a meeting of the Airport Commission.
Tutor, who was asked by commission President Ted Stein not to make problems on the site a personal issue, said: “I’ve done everything possible to satisfy [airport] staff and finish the job. But it’s very difficult not to be personal when you’re threatened with a notice of default, when I’ve never been threatened with that before in my life.”
A notice of default is the first step toward removing a contractor from a project. It is rarely used. Airport officials have said such a step would be a significant setback for the park-and-ride project and would be their last resort. The $34-million project, scheduled for completion in stages this summer, is weeks behind schedule.
In the last year, Tutor-Saliba has received 193 citations from city building inspectors for defects at the site, officials said. Forty-two of those citations were for problems that were still outstanding Monday, said Stuart Fricke, assistant chief airport engineer. Tutor said that many of the 193 citations resulted from a “battle” between airport staff and his staff and that the content of some of them was “trivial.”
Airport engineers said that Tutor-Saliba must fix several deficiencies in the parking structure, including replacing 20% of a concrete ramp that connects the ground floor with the second floor; enlarging a concrete column to shore up about 50 square feet of the second floor where the concrete is weakened; and completing a survey of the second floor to determine if the concrete is too thick and if it provides proper clearance on the lower level.
The company has replaced rebar on seven columns on the second deck of the parking structure that were dented after workers removed substandard concrete, Fricke said.
In November, inspectors ordered work on the site shut down in part after they found that concrete used in these columns, as well as on parts of the flooring and a ramp, was substandard, records show.
