From: acsullivan2001 <
acsullivan@starpower.net>
On Saturday, October 20, 2007, the ANC 3E voted unanimously to adopt
the following 13 recommendations for the draft RFP for the Tenley-
Friendship Library and Janney School site:
1. Seek Council approval earlier in the process. As we've
already indicated, ANC 3E feels strongly that Council action
declaring that public land is no longer needed for public use should
be a pre-requisite to the issuance of any RFP. And this particular
RFP demonstrates another reason why that's the right policy. DMPED
seems to envision selecting a private development partner and
requiring that partner to devote substantial resources to planning
prior to any Council action on this deal. This sets the District up
for a lawsuit if the Council fails to approve the deal. As
experience with development deals along the Anacostia Waterfront and
near the stadium demonstrates, it's a really bad (and expensive)
idea for an agency to promise parcels whose disposition it doesn't
yet control to specific developers.
2. Encourage proposals that do not require the use of the
Library's land. The funds for the reconstruction of our long-
delayed library have been fully allocated and the work is already in
progress. We have been repeatedly promised that exploration of a
mixed-use project at this site will not slow down progress on the
library. That's a disingenuous promise if the library is
incorporated into an as yet unplanned and unapproved mixed-use
residential building. We want to see our branch reopened in early
2010 as promised. Janney School's remodernization is on a longer
timeline, so that a PPP involving only DCPS and a private partner
has a better chance of minimizing delays in the provision of
adequate public facilities in our neighborhood. Between the
library, the fire station, and the Wilson pool debacles, we're tired
of endless delays and would be outraged to see this RFP derail the
construction of our branch library now that work is finally underway.
Allowing the decoupling of the library project will also make truly
competitive bidding possible. Given the magnitude and complexity of
the project, and in light of the amount of time Roadside has spent
working on it (since last January, at least), it seems as if the
only way to solicit realistic and competitive offers would be to
allow developers a six month period to put together their
proposals. That said, the community is opposed to derailing
progress being made on the library in the hope of generating an
acceptable offer for a public-private venture, so DMPED has been
contemplating only a 45-60 day window for submitting offers. A DCPS-
only PPP would allow for more time to solicit bids and to finalize
Janney's educational specifications document.
3. Give Developers a clearer sense of the challenges and
constraints involved in this project.
a. Highlight the hydrology issues. Instead of a
simple "buyer beware" clause re subsurface conditions, DC government
should provide the results of the library's borings (which indicate
that there's a high water table at the site), so that Offerors can
plan and budget accordingly.
b. Include an Inventory of Janney's Facilities and Existing
Conditions. Similarly, it's not enough just to say we're offering
Janney "as-is" and append pages from DCPS's generic design
guidelines. DCPS, working in conjunction with the Janney SIT, needs
to provide a survey/inventory of Janney's current facilities and
indicate which existing structures and/or program spaces: (1) must
be replaced (and which of these could be repurposed); (2) may be
replaced; (3) should remain dedicated to their current uses (but may
need expansion, repair, or modernization) . If there are any areas
of campus that should be off limits to private development, those
should be identified as well.
DCPS's Design Guidelines are written as if a school is being built
from the ground up. That's not the situation here, so the challenge
becomes determining how the additional 39,000 interior SF should be
used and how the outdoor requirements should be best met. These are
not decisions best left to developers.
c. Provide a more representative selection of passages from
the Comprehensive Plan. Overall goal should be to balance and
contextualize the District's commitment to transit-oriented
development with other competing concerns such as the retention of
public land, the preservation of green and open space, the capacity
for infrastructural expansion, and neighborhood conservation.
d. Provide a more detailed map of the site, including
topography and dimensions of existing structures, fields,
playgrounds, etc.
e. Detail neighboring uses and require that any zoning change
proposed be compatible with them. Both maps and narrative
descriptions should identify other buildings in the same block as
the parcel and describe their uses.
4. Require credible and comprehensive timelines that detail not
only construction schedules but also all necessary agreements and
approvals required by the proposed project. These two types of
timelines need to be integrated and sequenced so that it is clear
which steps must precede (and thus have the potential to delay)
subsequent steps. Offerors should outline their fast-tracking
strategies, if any. The District should impose meaningful financial
penalties for failure to meet deadlines.
5. Clearly define where/when DCPS's responsibility for Janney
Elementary School's facilities needs ends and the Developer's
begins. At this point, the Office of Public Education Facilities
Management (OPEFM) is engaged in a series of systemwide facilities
improvement initatives. If a private developer is slated to take
charge of Janney's modernization, at what point will OPEFM cease to
include Janney in its repair projects? This is a complicated issue
because it's hard to know what the project being bid on is if DCPS
continues to improve Janney's facilities. (For example, is an
electrical upgrade still necessary? See section 3.2. Wasn't that
accomplished over the summer?). If OPEFM continues to work on
Janney, the longer the developer waits, the less it has to do.
That's not a good incentive structure. On the other hand, we can't
have the school's needs ignored while we wait for a developer to be
chosen and get to work. At what point will Janney be pulled off
OPEFM's to do list? Will DCPS remain responsible for maintenance
and other more minor repairs (or urgent repairs?) throughout the
project?
6. Require Offerors to provide the information necessary to
evaluate and compare how each proposal will impact schoolchildren
both during construction and once the project is completed. Each
Offer must include a series of site plans that indicates roughly
where the construction safety perimeter will be at each major stage
of the project, the likely duration of that phase of construction,
and where the 485 students enrolled at Janney could be located
during it (off-campus vs. on campus, where on campus). Such site
plans should also label St. Ann's Academy so that the proximity of
construction to its educational facilities will be known as well.
The project itself should be designed to provide fire-fighting
apparatus easy access to the schools and to provide children safe
passage to and among both schools and the library.
7. Make full construction financing for the project a pre-
condition for submission of the Land Disposition Agreement (LDA) to
the Council. The condo market is soft right now and, increasingly,
lenders will not provide financing until at least 50% of the units
are pre-sold. We see no reason that the provision of our public
facilities should be held hostage to residential real estate
markets, especially since we've seen a condo project a block and a
half north of the site remain unbuilt for years after PUD approval,
apparently for lack of financing.
In the two previous DCPS PPPs we're aware of (Oyster and School
without Walls), the private partners came to the table with adequate
funding to complete the projects. We expect no less in this case.
8. Add language that precludes the more comparative orientation
of the Evaluation Standards from undermining the categorical nature
of the RFP's Requirements. We shouldn't be grading on a curve here ?
make it clear that failure to meet the requirements of the RFP will
lead to an offer's disqualification as non-responsive. All offerors
are encouraged not just to meet -- but to exceed -- certain
requirements, and those who do will be given preference. This
needs to be made explicit. We can't simply rely on the provision
that gives the District discretion to reject any submission as
unresponsive to the requirements. If all of the offers come in with
less than what the District has required, the temptation will be to
lower standards in order to make a deal.
9. Weight the evaluation criteria to establish clear priorities
for the project. From the community's standpoint, time is of the
essence on both the library and the school projects, minimizing
disruption to the education of the 700 students at Janney Elementary
School and St Ann's Academy is a major concern, and green space is
highly valued. All of these priorities are more important to the
community than using the site as a source of revenue generation for
public facilities, given that the reconstruction of both the school
and the library are already fully funded through capital budgets.
10. Provide for expert, independent evaluation of each
responsive offer prior to its submission to the Selection Panel.
Each responsive offer should be submitted to the Office of Public
Education Facility Modernization (OPEFM) and to the Economic
Development Finance section of the Office of the Chief Financial
Officer (EDF - OCFO) for their independent analysis prior to the
submission of any such offers to the selection panel. Both offices
should provide written evaluations that will be prsesented to the
panel along with each Offeror's own materials.
OPEFM should be asked to assess whether the timelines are
comprehensive and credible and whether they suggest that the
Offerors possess the management and organizational skills necessary
to reliably complete a project of this magnitude on schedule.
EDF-OCFO's review should include not only an analysis of the
financial pro forma submitted by each Offeror, but an independent
assessment of additional costs incurred or savings realized by the
District that have not been included in the Offeror's materials.
Ultimately, EDF's reports on the proposals should be provided in a
form that enables the selection panel to directly compare the net
financial benefit of each offer to the others as well as to the
option of proceeding as previously planned and relying on capital
funds to rebuild the Tenley-Friendship Library and modernize Janney
School. [[NB: If there is no requirement in the final RFP that
construction financing be a pre-condition for approval of the LDA,
then OCFO should also evaluate and rate the Offerors' financial
capacity and assess whether obtaining financing for the specific
proposal is likely to represent a significant hurdle.]]
11. Expand the Selection Panel to provide substantial community
representation. We join ANC 3F in proposing four such
representatives ? one each from ANC 3E and 3F, one chosen by the
Janney parents, and one chosen by the Friends of the Library.
Remember that the District's citizens own public land and should be
treated as owners in situations involving its sale or long-term
lease. Given that the selection panel makes a recommendation to the
Mayor who, himself, chooses the developer (subject to later Council
approval), there's no risk that representing the community on the
panel will lead to governmental decisionmaking or expertise being
overruled.
12. Require the Selection Panel to compare RFP-generated offers
not only to each other but also to the modernization of both public
facilities using the capital funds already budgeted for them.
13. Work through and with the ANCs. All community outreach
should be done through, and with the active involvement of, the
local ANCs. Transparency requires that the ANCs be notified of and
invited to all meetings between or among local stakeholders and
Offerors, the designated developer(s)
, and/or DMPED. Title X is
very clear that the Mayor has an obligation to insure "continuous
community input" into decisions about the disposition of public
lands and that the ANC s are the relevant community representatives
in cases of this sort.
Anne C. Sullivan
ANC 3E05