Pensacola upheld a bid protest challenging the company’s selection to tear down the old Baptist Hospital.
Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves announced on April 29 that the city would be entering negotiations with NorthStar Contracting Group instead of the previously No. 1 ranked firm, L.M. Sessler Excavating and Wrecking Inc.
NorthStar filed a bid protest challenging the selection of L.M. Sessler as the No. 1 firm. City Attorney Adam Cobb wrote a letter on April 25 informing the two firms that, after reviewing the challenge, the city found that Sessler did not have a valid general contractor’s license when they submitted their bid as required in the request for proposals and instead only had a demolition specialty contractor’s license.
Sessler was disqualified from the bid process and NorthStar was now the top-ranked firm, according to Cobb’s letter.
The city will now move into final negotiations with NorthStar and Reeves said he doesn’t expect there to be any financial impact on the project.
“There is no consequential financial impact of this change, and there’s no at this point, no substantive timeline impact of this change,” Reeves said. “Obviously, a negotiation is a fluid amount of time − we’ve got to see − but that would have been the same case regardless of the result of this protest.”
Reeves also announced that Baptist Health Care’s board of trustees had approved a donation agreement on April 28. Under the agreement, the city will take over the old hospital property, tear it down, and redevelop it into a mixed-income development centered on a community anchor like a school.
The budget for the demolition of the old hospital is $16 million.
Baptist Hospital is expected to contribute $5.9 million to the demolition. Pensacola is receiving $7 million from the state and contributing $1 million of its own money. The city also has $5 million in grant funding to redevelop the campus.
Escambia County had tentatively pledged $2 million to the project, but Commission Chairman Mike Kohler has questioned that commitment.
The city had not released any information about the bid prices to the News Journal, and on April 24, the City Council was told the city couldn’t disclose the bid prices. However, on April 25, the county attorney sent Escambia County commissioners a list of the bid prices that the News Journal obtained from the county.
Sessler’s bid was $14.4 million, and NorthStar’s bid was $13.1 million. Those prices don’t include other costs, such as a 10% reserve the city typically holds toward a project to cover unexpected expenses. Reeves said that even with the current bid prices, he expects the full $16 million budget will be needed to complete the project.
One factor that led the city selection committee to choose Sessler on April 3 over NorthStar was NorthStar’s proposal to crush the concrete debris from the old hospital on site and spread it back over the property, while Sessler would haul the debris to a landfill to be crushed.
Reeves said while it wasn’t included as a requirement for the project, he does not support crushing concrete on-site, and that topic will be one of the issues he brings up with NorthStar during negotiations.
“I can’t speak to what that looks like, or what NorthStar will or won’t do − I’ve had zero conversation with them − but I can tell you that our focus will be to be able to crush off site, if that’s at all possible,” Reeves said. “And I would expect that it will be.”
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Pensacola entering contract negotiations for Baptist Hospital demo