At least two businessmen said they approached the city and offered to sell turn-key buildings for at least $1 million less than the renovation of the municipal court would cost. They said they could get the work done faster, too. Both men said the city’s administration wouldn’t sit down and negotiate.
The city staff spent around $5,000 to have an outside consulting firm perform an “apples-to-apples” analysis of the other two sites. The city’s consultants determined that the site on Broadway would cost the city $6.2 million and the site at Hoyt would cost $9.3 million, compared with renovating the current site for $6 million.
However, the consultants used appraisals of the buildings and assumed the city would hire the contractors. That’s the fairest way to handle such a comparison, the city said. The owners argued they could have done the work cheaper and sold the buildings for less.
After the meeting Wednesday, both property owners expressed frustration over the city’s process.
Tom Hoban of Coast Equity Partners in Everett said the city “horribly misrepresented” his company’s offer and he was never given a chance to present a solution that would have saved the city as much as $2.5 million and been finished in less than a year.
“The rush to make a decision using fuzzy math and with so many questions unanswered will cover up the reality of what the city just did to citizens and taxpayers,” he said.
Dan Jenkins of Weiss-Jenkins Property in Seattle said the city’s process was “embarrassing in its inefficiency.”
“My view is they have no credible evaluation formula — period,” he said.
He said the factors the city used to evaluate cost appeared to have been chosen to support a predetermined conclusion.
“I bet you $100 they blow that budget,” he said. “There is no accountability.”
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