Taking into account millions of dollars proposed in extra fees that would be necessary for a new design team, escalation of materials and construction costs and expenses for debt management, Chip Ingraham, attorney for the Terminal Design Team, said the decision to terminate could cost the City of Atlanta no less than an extra $150 million over what has already been spent on the stalled terminal project.
"The City of Atlanta wanted a world-class facility with a scope of work significantly expanded beyond the original program, but was unwilling to compromise on numerous money-saving options recommended by the design team to reduce the cost increases due to those scope increases," said Ingraham, a partner with Seyfarth Shaw. "Airport management threw up their hands and shut down the process without calculating the cost of this mismanagement. A $150 million price tag is the consequence of that unfortunate action."
Mr. Ingraham noted that Mr. DeCosta has stated it would have been "best" to go forward with TDT and that it would be "faster and we could save money."
Rather than becoming needlessly burdened with $150 million in additional costs to the City, Ingraham said the City could have continued with TDT and gotten the project underway for $15 million - which includes the amount owed to the design consortium and future redesign costs - "and steel would be going up as we speak."
According to Ingraham, an initial venture toward mediation recently deteriorated. "Based on the current direction, the City of Atlanta is setting itself up to get an inferior, lesser facility at an outrageous price," Ingraham said. "This is a shameful and irresponsible misuse of taxpayer money due directly to airport mismanagement."
TDT also strongly disagrees with several statements made by airport general manager Ben DeCosta at two consecutive City of Atlanta Transportation Committee meetings this fall that Ingraham said were either uninformed or misleading.
TDT, a 42 percent minority enterprise comprised of several award-winning companies known to be the elite in the aviation industry, indeed put their best team on the field and worked tirelessly to make certain the project became a reality. Instead, TDT has been used as a scapegoat for airport mismanagement.
© 2005 Business Wire
