Mich. firm wins BIA parking garage bid

BANGOR – City councilors Monday went against a staff recommendation and awarded a six-figure design contract for the parking garage proposed for Bangor International Airport to a Michigan firm that will be working with a local partner.

Voting in favor of hiring Rich and Associates of Southfield, Mich., and its Bangor partner AMES A/E, were council members Annie Allen, John Cashwell, Peter D’Errico, Richard Greene and Dan Tremble, while Chairman Frank Farrington and Geoffrey Gratwick voted against it. Two of the city’s nine councilors, Susan Hawes and Richard Stone, were absent from the meeting.

A staff subcommittee composed of city and airport officials had recommended Walker Parking Consultants of Boston, saying the firm offers specialized experience in building parking garages and unparalleled design work. In fact, the company has published an 800-page textbook on airport parking garages, most of which Gratwick had read.

City Manager Edward Barrett saw the differing approaches to the issue as healthy.

“I think that is appropriate and often happens in our system,” he said.

Walker planned to work with Harriman Associates of Auburn and Hoyle, Tanner and Associates of Manchester, N.H., on the plan, at a cost of about $500,000.

The council’s finance committee, however, favored Rich and Associates both for its lower proposal, totaling approximately $450,000, and its choice to partner with a Bangor firm.

BIA Director Rebecca Hupp said she and her staff could work with either company and urged the council to make a decision.

“We need to move forward with this project,” she said.

The proposed multilevel parking garage, projected to cost more than $7 million, would be paid for through parking fees, Hupp said earlier.

She said the garage, which would accommodate up to 500 vehicles, is needed to ease the airport’s ongoing parking crunch.

The 5-2 decision followed yet another round of discussion, at least the fourth so far on the issue.

As the council majority saw it, the Rich-Ames partnership submitted the apparent low bid, especially when travel was factored in. The fact that some of the money will stay in the community also was a plus.

Gratwick and Farrington had different reasons for not voting with the council majority.

“We do not want to give the impression that we are going to diminish competition solely for the local [companies that submit bids to the city],” Farrington said, after temporarily turning the chairmanship to council colleague Allen so he could weigh in on the debate.

Gratwick said Walker’s expertise in the design of parking garages made it uniquely qualified for the job, which he thought was important, given the project’s price tag.

To him, it came down to the difference between “good enough” and the best, he said, asking his council colleagues which they would choose if hiring a cardiac surgeon.

He also noted that the city has had to deal with ongoing maintenance problems with the Pickering Square parking garage, designed by Rich and Associates.