Steve Shiver’s sweetheart deal to build a 32-lane bowling alley on city property in Homestead seemed like a sure thing.
Homestead council members, sitting as a committee of the whole — which is just another name for the Homestead Council — had agreed last week to sell the bowling alley to a group of developers that would invest at least $2.5 million into it and turn it into a beacon of family entertainment.
But, on Wednesday, someone changed her mind. Some say Councilwoman Patricia Fairclough-McCormick saw the light.
Fariclough-McCormick had been among the four council members that passed the deal along on Dec. 11, same night the bargain basement downtown Homestead deal with the troubled (read: tainted) Dade Medical College and Ernesto Perez were killed. But she slammed on the brakes Wednesday when she said that she wasn’t sure she liked the process for the bowling alley project — in which Elite Real Estate was going to buy the $2.6-million property for $500,000 — and wanted it to go out to bid.
Apparently, it never did. It was a staff-negotiated contract that reeks of an inside deal, which is left over from the former administration. You know, the one when headed by then mayor Steve Bateman, who was arrested on unrelated corruption charges after he got secretly paid to lobby for a firm doing business in the city. You know, the one being investigated for other graft.
Shiver, who was said to be bad-mouthing the councilwoman in the back of chambers, did not return calls or texts. But he has been quoted defending this seemingly bargain deal, which he is paid to do, and said that as a taxpayer himself, he is tired of seeing the vacant property cost the city money. It is true that several projects have never materialized.
Fairclough-McCormick said she always questioned whether the city could get a better deal and had a change of heart after the vote two weeks ago because her office was contacted by other parties — who could perhaps offer better terms — interested in developing the property, which has been vacant for years.
“They were told the site was unavailable,” the councilwoman told Ladra.
“I asked the city manager if it went out to bid and he said no. I just thought it seemed more exclusive than inclusive. I wanted to protect our asset,” she said, referring to the bowling alley project that would basically cost the city about $250,000 a year because it was subsidizing bowling, said City Manager George Gretsas.
The councilwoman’s motion Wednesday to take it out to bid in 90 days failed, which is silly, since that is what they are going to do anyway and the rebel nay voters just delayed it further. Because the motion for Elite Real Estate to buy the property under the agreement also failed without Fairclough-McCormick’s vote. Mayor Jeff Porter recused himself due to a potential real or perceived conflict of interest and the other two voting against it were Vice Mayor Steve Shelley and Councilman Jon Burgess. Council memb
ers Elvis Maldonado, Judy Waldman and Jimmie “The Rev” Williams voted in favor. And a 3-3 vote kills the deal.
That caused Shiver, former Homestead mayor and county administrator lobbying for the firm and developer Carlos Sanchez, to go into what was described variably as a tailspin and an “impassioned plea” to save the deal.
I mean, the deal was practically snatched out from under him. The city manager had just said the contract could be signed that night. Shiver even pleaded with the councilwoman, asking her not to kill the deal because of him, to not punish Dr. Sanchez because she didn’t like him. She told him it was based on principal not personalities.
“He said that the process had been fair. I told him it may have been fair, but it wasn’t formal. I like formality in things,” Fairclough-McCormick told Ladra afterwards. “I don’t work for them, I work for the citizens of Homestead.”
She said she was told she was “risking my political capital,” the councilwoman told me. “But I don’t make decisions based on political capital.”
Too bad rumors that she is running for higher office, and against Miami-Dade Commissioner Lynda Bell, are just untrue. Despite that being exactly the kind of mindset we want in the county and at the state, Fairclough-McCormick says she has no higher aspirations. She has been “heavily courted,” she admits. But, alas, she ain’t biting.
“I have no aspirations for higher office,” she said.
While nobody backed to reconsider the agreement and the move to put the project out to bid failed, the bowling alley property will come back in January and, most likely, go out to bid anyway, like it should have in the first place.
And if Shriver’s team can compete, let them. All the better for everyone.
Because the last thing Homestead needs is another sweet inside deal that screws its taxpayers.
Homestead’s Steve Shiver strikes out on bowling alley added by Ladra on
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