WeHo Council Awards $10.8 million Contract for City Hall Parking Garage

The West Hollywood City Council tonight awarded a $10.8 million contract for building a new parking garage behind City Hall to T.B. Pennick & Sons of San Diego.

The vote was a 3-1 decision, with Councilmember John D’Amico opposing the award, saying the city hadn’t followed its established procedures for soliciting bids. Councilmember Jeffrey Prang was absent from the meeting.

R.J. Daum Construction of Garden Grove, which submitted a $12.2 million bid, filed a protest claiming irregularities with the city’s handling of the Pennick bid.

When five sealed bids were opened on Nov. 21, the Pennick bid was missing two required supporting documents – a “non-collusion” affidavit stating that Pennick had come up with the bid on its own and a history of previous contracts that were subject to the federal Equal Opportunity requirements. Pennick submitted those two documents four hours after the bids were opened.

While Daum demanded a hearing on the matter, no Daum representative appeared before the Council tonight to argue its case. A Pennick representative said the oversight was minor because it didn’t permit the company to redo its bid.

City Attorney Mike Jenkins said the late documents did not have any affect on the amount Pennick bid. Three of council members concurred.

“This is in no way a material irregularity,” said Councilmember John Heilman.

D’Amico argued that the city should reopen the bidding process. “This is creating a bad precedent,” he said, arguing that it sent the message that the city does not follow its own rules.

D’Amico said Pennick got “two bites of the apple,” because it didn’t have to decide whether to submit the missing papers until after learning that it had made the lowest bid.

The 68-space parking lot behind the City Hall building at 8300 Santa Monica Blvd. at Sweetzer is scheduled to close at the beginning of January when construction of the new five-story, 200-space automated garage begins. The city sold $18 million in bonds to pay for the structure.

Once the City Hall lot closes, visitors to City Hall will have to park at the Kings Road parking garage, two blocks away on the northeast corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Kings Road. The city will provide parking validation for that garage.

City Hall employees who currently park in the Kings Road lot will now park in the Hancock parking lot on Hancock Avenue at Santa Monica Boulevard or in the parking garage underneath Gateway Plaza on the southwest corner of La Brea Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard.

City Manager Paul Arevalo said that although it was “inconvenient for employees,” he and all of the more than 200 City Hall employees would be using those lots during the 18-month construction period.

When asked whether the city will provide a shuttle for employees to get from those parking lots to the City Hall building, Arevalo replied the employees would be walking or using the MTA buses to get to the building.