Lake Worth looking east towards the Lake Worth beach
Circa 1960
We continue to read fantasy regarding Commissioner Suzanne Mulvehill.
First, it was rumored in the local news that she was really going to run again in 2012. This rumor was spread by her opponents and the local news picked up on the false rumor that she was just fooling/lying to everyone by saying she wasn't going to run again. We have seen how that turned out.
Now the local newspaper is still on her case suggesting that (since she was really telling the truth all along that she was not going to run), they had to invent another fantasy to keep the political smirch alive...her "ducking the past." This time the reason used was the Greater Bay law suit that soon approaches trial. This is the most laughable fantasy yet.
I don’t remember the exact date that we signed over our 20 acres of beachfront to Greater Bay but it was in July 2006 that the Agreed Upon Business Terms was signed by the parties. Our City turned over our valuable land to a contractor who had NEVER had any experience on developing anything of this magnitude. The City NEVER really checked them out. And although suggested at the lectern to have the City of Lake Worth visit several of their completed projects here in Florida, the City never visited one that Greater Bay had developed. If you are going to build a house, the first thing that any normal person does is to check out a property where that contractor had built before. It's sort of standard operational procedure. You want to know what you are going to get for your money. In the case of the Lake Worth beach, it was multi-millions of dollars and loss of control for 20 years or more and a contract where Lake Worth was not going to make one red cent.
The basic of things were never checked even though we asked the Commission to do their due diligence. Peter Willard had submitted a bio that said he was with the Willard Group, Inc. when in fact his corporation had been dissolved. They also stated that Rampart Properties would be the property manager on the new building. This was checked out at the time and Rampart didn't know anything about it and told me that they did not service this area. (They are located in St. Petersburg). Also, GB's Willard had a credit report of shame.
Greater Bay has been involved in building a Starbucks, a day care center, some schools and a Holiday Inn. They never performed under the terms of the Contract with Lake Worth that was for a lease of 20 years minus one day. Not one little piece of dirt was ever moved. No plans were ever submitted. Greater Bay just continued to stall and stall giving one lame excuse after another.
Cara Jennings and Mark Drautz were the only ones on the dais who voted "nay" to Greater Bay. You can blame this entire Greater Bay mess on Commissioners Nadine Burns, Dave Vespo and especially Retha Lowe, a lady who was just plain tired of "kicking that football" and who was a party to the insurrection on the dais by grabbing the contract out of Drautz's hands and signed it, having never read it.
Then came our Olympic pool--The commission extended the pool project manager's contract on a 4/1 vote. The commission had changed by that time and Cara Jennings was the only commissioner who voted "nay" in retaining the pool project manager who supposedly was looking out for Lake Worth as Greater Bay was in charge of the repairs. He just was not on top of things. (Greater Bay never submitted anything on time nor did they complete anything). The pool, as everyone knows, had shoddy work and some items were not even done. That commission, (Clemens, Vespo and Lowe) went against the advice of former city attorney Larry Karns, who told them not to hire Greater Bay for the pool repairs. We paid, including the Grant, $500,000 for those repairs plus another few hundred thousand overall for the pool contract manager. Now Bornstein and staff want to put a match to all that money and close our pool.
On December 4, 2008, the City Commission, consisting of Mayor Jeff Clemens and commissioners Retha Lowe (who was the only dissenter--she was holding on to the flim flam man up to the last minute), Cara Jennings, Jo-Ann Golden and Suzanne Mulvehill voted to terminate the Lease with Greater Bay for non-performance.
So, no one is "ducking the past." The past is what it is--a weak commission that was willing to turn over our 19 acres to someone unqualified because they were tired of all the complaints about "not doing anything about our beach" and putting up with the lack of maintenance by the City of our important asset. Incompetence was the culprit across the board with a commission with no will to do the right thing at our beach that has an overall value of $500 million some believe.
This entire mess happened ALL before Commissioner Mulvehill. She was just lucky enough to be voted into office just a few weeks before the vote to run Greater Bay out of town for sitting on their thumbs for several years and not presenting one thing to the City of Lake Worth to instill any confidence in their company that they could or would perform. Commissioner Mulvehill was on the side of the vote to end the fiasco that never should have happened in the first place. We now have a brand new casino that will pay for itself from revenues and a beach redevelopment paid by the Recreational Bond. Lake Worth will be in control but will have to abide by County rules for 30 years because of the Bond covenants.
As everyone knows, Greater Bay has sued the city. They just won't get completely out of town until they get what they came here to get in the first place...$$$. Now we have yet another commission involved in the Greater Bay mess. No one knows whether this commission will let it proceed to trial. There is a lot of pressure from their political pundits these days to settle legal suits and "make it all go away" placing an emphasis on saving money rather than standing up for principle.
In the meantime, our Casino is completed, the beach redevelopment is proceeding and Mulligans will have its grand opening on October 3. Thank you, Suzanne for the Circle of Light.
22 comments:
Lynn, I understand why you feel the way you do, as well as have the comments and opinions that you do. But on these points, I see things differently. Of course, when it comes to Court Decisions, you and I will not be participants.
But as to my opinions and recollections:
Mayor Drautz initiated an RFP in which the only developing entity in the US that responded to a South Florida, oceanfront retail/restaurant proposal with sufficient parking was the Greater Bay Corp. The Commission first voted to accept Greater Bay and then voted to approve the Documents formalizing the Public-Private Partnership.
While Staff, under any administration, is not known for its quality of Due Diligence, many of your comments about GB Corporate Ownership and Litigation Record of its Managing Partners do not reflect what is quite common throughout the Construction Industry.
Greater Bay pointed out the pending loss of a Grant on the Pool and although out of the sequence in the approved Construction Documents, offered to do the construction. Staff hired Pugh Pools to assist Staff in completing the scope of work Staff outlined for the Pool. That work included some punch list items Staff presented after signing off on the Completion of GB’s Pool Construction.
A Series of Clouds on Title, from the City not being able to show Ownership of the entire Site through the McCauley-?McNamara-?Dorsey Lawsuit, are alleged by GB to have stopped the Timeline of GB Requirements as per the Documents.
Then the Commission voted to terminate the Contracts/Documents of the Public=Private Partnership. City Attorney Karns’ opinion to the Commission on the matter will probably be discussed in detail at the Trial.
Commissioner Mulvehill will probably be held just as responsible for the consequences of her actions during her first days in office as her last days. The Individual and Aggregate Commissioner Insurance for inappropriate actions while in office are only a small part of the Damages claimed by GB. Of course, collecting on Deficiency Judgments is even more difficult than winning Deficiency Judgments in Court, but I understand Commissioner Mulvehill’s current concern.
Given the Legal fees paid to date and the Amount of Staff & Commission time spent on this activity, it is not a matter of winning or losing, but of how much this activity has cost the City.
Staff hired Pugh Pools to assist Staff in completing the scope of work Staff outlined for the Pool. That work included some punch list items Staff presented after signing off on the Completion of GB’s Pool Construction.
Pugh Pools was a sub-contractor of Greater Bay's. It was F&*ked up from beginning.
GB's failure to perform was stopped because of the McNamara/McCauley lawsuit you believe--there was no Dorsey lawsuit and he was not a party to this suit. GB could have submitted a plan. They didn't want to spend one nickle doing anything per their contract.
We are definitely looking at this differently. That is why there are two sides to the argument and why there is a lawsuit. Of course, GB just wants $$$.
The only reason why we have so many legal fees is because Willard has prolonged this on purpose to jack up fees so that we will settle.
I think that there is a case in regards that the city committed fraud in order to get the money from the State grant for the pool because the completion date was falsified and certain items per the contract were never completed.
That was O'Gorman's fault.
Look--Lois Frankel had no problem going forward with her city center in spite of a lawsuit that went all the way up to the FL Supreme Court that she LOST, by the way.
I remember the meeting when the commission voted to end the GB contract. I think that Lynn and I were the only two people who commented that the commission better do this right. I begged that they get a second legal opinion before doing this but no one was interested. The fault here is in the manner in which the deal ended. No one wants to get sued and have to spend a half million dollars on lawyers. When you want out of a deal you need to do it right. Now matter how this ends we did it wrong. It has cost us thousands and it could end up costing us millions. That should never happen in a contract case. You take the facts, you take the contract and you figure it out. It's not that hard to do. My biggest fear is that there is a letter from Larry Carns to Greater Bay telling them that they are excused from performing until the title issues are resolved. I was told by Willard that he had such a letter. If that's true we could be in deep do do. It should be a very interesting trial.
John, if such a letter exists, then we could be screwed. I believe that this might have pertained to the title of part of the land at the beach issued from the Brelsfords, not the lawsuit of McCauly/Mcnamara. Once this was cleared up, there was no cloud on the title.
The time for speculation, righteous indignation and assignment of blame is coming to an end. We chose our Commission to make decisions like the ones they did. If they chose poorly, we bear part of the responsibility and the consequences.
We are required to perform our responsibility yet again in Nov. We must choose wisely.
EXCELLENT article,Lynn.Greater Bay was the "flipper" for our ocean front property. They were going to flip it to a major developer(a family freind of Shanon Materios,perhaps)?I remember Cara Jennings asking to see a receipt,ANY receipt ,for the pool,but she was completely ignored by Clemens and his friends on the Commission..Dennis Dorsey was looking at the farce of the pool "construction" on a regular basis and he begged someone at city hall to listen to how we were being ripped off. Nobody except Cara Listened. Laura Hanna ,acting city manager was on the phone daily with O'Gorman. City hall staff KNEW how we were being ripped off.As usual,staff was a big part of our problems. Mr Bornstein ,you will never know the truth until you quit listening to liars!GREAT article ,Lynn! Thanks for cutting through all of the untrue bull$hit that has been thrown around on this subject.Mulvehill has nothing to worry about,but Vespo,Burns,Lowe,Clemens,O'Gorman etc. better pray that their part in this scheme never gets out.
The McCauley-McNamara suit was based on the illegal lease term of over 40 years: 20 years minus a day lease, 20 years minus a day sublease and a construction period of indeterminate time. They could have taken whatever time they wanted to construct the project. Greater Bay was thus given control for over 40 years in violation of our Charter, which gives control of the beach to the people. Casey Ciklin tried to get it dismissed and was denied. Judge Fine apparently saw it for what it is.
Although O'Gorman was happy to take the $90/hr for holding Peter Willard's hand for a couple of years, he couldn't make it to the final inspection of the pool to sign off to get the FRDAP grant.
It had been then Cmr. Jennings who alerted the Commission to the potential loss of the grant if we failed to get working on the pool right away. ( Funny, it took an anarchist to take care of business.) The pool cover for which the City was billed by Willard for c. $28,000. was a large flimsy piece of bubble wrap, just like his resume.
Cmr. Mulvehill's dedication, networking,and business acumen are the driving forces behind the existence today of an iconic building about to open, helping Lake Worth to get on the map in a good light.
I believe she forfeited personal profit in her own business to dedicate herself to the role of Commissioner and deserves our thanks rather than the criticism of petty ingrates who contributed nothing to our City and seem jealous of her beauty and intelligence.
I don't understand why people keep talking about GB being a flipper? If this was so valuable, why did we get only one developer responding to the RFP?
My real concern is the secong floor. We still don't have an tenant for the north end and staff continues to insist they will be managing the catering. Why isn't the second floor a major concern?
Not sure one developer responded to an RFP as I am not sure we went out on one. One thing for sure, we did advertise that we were looking for someone to develop our beach, one ad hitting the Wall Street Journal where Willard read it over his green mountain coffee. I would need to know the full details of the advertisement, what markets it hit, how often and when.
Next, Staff took it upon themselves to go out on an RFP for an exclusive caterer without commission authority. That was shot down and that is a good thing. Staff continues to do dumb things like this.
Next, if we don't have a tenant for the 2nd floor that has the most amazing view, look to the real estate broker who never believed in this project from day one. Why we kept this guy is a real mystery. The building has an elevator on the north side taking people directly to the upper level. Someone is missing out. We have had restaurants wanting to lease but we are trying to attract a good fit for our building, not a burger/bar joint.
the flipper element is a real possibility as 1) GB was not qualified to do this project and 2) they never performed any aspect of the contract.
All lease agreements like this have a clause that allows the lease to be assigned to another party. So yes GB could get another entity to take over the lease. But under the terms of the contract the City had to approve the new entity taking over. This clause protected the city from the "flipping" that keeps being mentioned in the comments. The city also maintained full control over who they could lease space to, events and many other aspects of this project. What the city gave up, was all revenue from parking and other businesses at the beach in return for a minimum payment of $500,000 a year with cost of living increases. GB was fully responsible for all other costs associated with this property and agreed to insure it from loss all at their expense. Now we have all those responsibilities and God help us as we couldn't paint the beach.
Does anybody think that a General Contractor and a Shopping Center Developer cannot build a 50,000 square foot, 2 story restaurant-retail building without burdening Lake worth with millions of dollars of cost overruns and vacancies?
"Mulvehill's dedication networking and business acumen are the driving forcesd behind an iconic building, I belive Mulvehill forfeited personal profit in her own business to serve he city, seem jealous of her beauty and intelligence".
It'a good to see you guys are keeping your sense of humor in what could end up being a disaster for the city.
Wasn't Miulvehill foreclosed and broke before she even ran?
What did Miulvehill sacrifice? What business?
Who did Mulvehill network with?
Yes. This was an entire beach redevelopment project...not just a 2 story building. Also, he has no experience building over the coastal construction line...no experience in building on a beachfront. What is your interest in Greater Bay? Is this Peter?
Everything could have been a big disaster for this city. Going with Great Bay surely would have been. Entrusting our beachfront for 40years to a guy who never paid his bills. Christ.
Evidently we didn't have any experience in building over the CCL, nor are we the best site planners for parking and traffic flow.
Of course there are all those millions in cost overruns and the future of our crack management expertise.
One of the interesting things about the GB deal was the fact that whatever bank or entity that financed this deal for them would not get a lien on our beach property. So if GB failed and did not pay its mortgage loan the city was not at risk to lose the property. The bank was only to take as security the income that the project could generate. So lets say they laoned GB 8 million and GB went belly up. The only asset the bank would have would be our lease which required the city to approve everything. The bank would have to deal with us or try to sell the lease. Lake Worth would control who could buy it. There would have been a really good chance that the bank would offer to let the city buy the lease which it had every right to do under the lease at any time GB requested the right to assign the lease. It would have been real nice if the bank offered to sell us the lease for 50 cents on the dollar. Lake Worth would have the entire complex for 4 million.
I do not believe that the City had the right to enter into a ground lease with Grater Bay because of the reverter clause: "...the Deed is given and granted upon the express condition subsequent that the Grantee herein or its successors or assigns shall NEVER sell or convey or lease the above described land or any part thereof to any private person, firm or corporation, it being the intention of this restriction that the said land shall be used solely for public purposes."
Once this was discovered by the Title company, the entire contract should have been null and void.
You are incredible. You are an expert at law, development, operating a city all kinds of stuff. You must have had a wonderful career to know so much about so many things. You sure are lucky to be an expert on so many important matters.
Your sarcasm is noted. Did you contribute anything else in your statement that I might have missed?
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