City hires investor as project manager
Firm to get $1.65 million to handle Harrison Square
Link (JG)
"Fort Wayne on Monday hired one of the major Harrison Square investors to coordinate the entire downtown development.
The city’s redevelopment commission unanimously approved hiring Barry Real Estate, of Atlanta, to be project coordinator for the $120 million project.
The real estate firm will be paid $1.65 million, which city officials said was a good price and had been part of the budget from the beginning.
Steve Brody, a city consultant for Harrison Square, said the city talked to several firms about the work and determined Barry offered the best price for the service"
[...]
"The commission previously hired Weigand Construction as construction manager for the ballpark, at a cost of $400,000. Brody said combining the two contracts still puts the city’s administrative costs at less than 5 percent of the project’s cost, which he said is the industry standard.
The board also approved selling the land for the condominium building to Barry for $675,000 and the land for the hotel to White Lodging for $17.50. Greg Leatherman, redevelopment director, said providing the hotel land for almost nothing has always been a planned incentive.
Brody also said negotiations regarding the walkway from the Courtyard to the Grand Wayne Center, through the Embassy Theatre building, are progressing. He said the sides are finalizing the agreement, which he hopes will be done “much sooner” than the end of the year. The walkway was a deal-breaking incentive required by the hotel developers to build in downtown Fort Wayne."
2 comments:
I know there will be a lot of flack about hiring an outside company to do this, but the matter is that Ft Wayne has to stop the incest and start working externally more often. I'm not saying we need to ship all of our dollars outside of the state, but we need to give projects to the most qualified and cost effective people to do the job - even if that means they are out of state. From a high level, we need to move away from creating a city where we all just exchange dollars amongst ourselves and to one which dollars are coming and going on a national and international scale.
Barry brings the track record of doing these kinds of projects. Both in scope and costs. I am not sure any local company has a track record even to approach that of Barry. So, at this time, that Barry is the right company.
Again, we are dealing with the show stopping walkway. I just set and chuckle to myself knowing it is going to happen and the people of Fort Wayne are being had one more time.
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