Since it opened in 1995, Denver International Airport has attracted some laughable conspiracy theories that suggest the sprawling facility’s actual purpose is to serve as the headquarters for the Illuminati or other shadowy groups.
While it’s fun to make jokes about conspiracy theories, more sober minds presently have cause for legitimate questions about big-ticket plans to remake the terminal. Yet DIA officials are keeping significant facts from the traveling public, Denver residents and even City Council members, who ultimately are tasked with approving any deals.
We’re concerned about DIA’s decision to favor a single team bidding for the terminal’s transformation — Madrid-based Ferrovial Airports and Centennial-based Saunders Construction — and to keep basic details about cost and the team’s selection process under wraps.
As The Denver Post’s Jon Murray reported recently, that information may never receive public scrutiny. What’s been provided to the council and the press is heavily redacted. This for a project expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
The issue is more difficult to referee than it might seem. Colorado’s open records laws allow for some secrecy in cases where private companies bidding for government projects can withhold information. Should releasing the information harm a government’s ability to conduct deals in the future, or should detail-sharing hurt a company’s competitive advantage on future projects, the law allows for keeping secrets.
Further, the design-build aspect of the potential contract isn’t your father’s bid process. DIA isn’t asking for work on a straightforward task, like painting the Great Hall in exchange for a set price paid from fees charged to travelers. Instead, airport director Kim Day is asking for a team to both front much of the money to remake the terminal and come up with design and operation plans that alter many aspects of what takes place there — from moving the security gates to figuring out how to expand vendor opportunities. In exchange, the winning team gets to operate the facility and set rents to make back its money and whatever profit it can over the course of many years. The bid teams reasonably argue that some aspects of their operational plans fall under the protected category of trade secrets.
But it seems a stretch to hide from the public the members of the panel tasked with winnowing the bid teams to Ferrovial. And why has DIA so favored a single team?
Councilman Kevin Flynn, a former communications officer for the Regional Transportation District — which used a similar design-build process to build the new rail line to the airport — reminds us that RTD kept at least two bid teams in the mix while it negotiated a final contract. The savings gained from playing one team against the other totaled $300 million.
DIA spokeswoman Stacey Stegman tells us management chose not to go that route because the work being asked of the bid teams there is more complicated than building and running a rail line. But even if you buy that explanation, and we’re not sure we do, deciding to favor a single team only strengthens the argument for more transparency now, well before DIA gets to point of signing the deal.
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