By Juan Montoya
Even before the first spadeful of dirt is turned over on the new Brownsville-South Padre Island International Airport, changes in the original design have ballooned from $27.5 million to $38 million, including unforeseen costs associated with the hiring outside the procurement process of Origo Works, an architectural firm associated with Mayor Tony Martinez.
The request fro the change order will be considered during tonight's meeting of the City of Brownsville Commission at 6 p.m. in commission chambers, on the second floor of the Brownsville City Hall – Old Federal Building, located at 1001 East Elizabeth Street.
CH2MHILL of Englewood,
Co. requested the change order from Airport Director Bryant Walker in a letter dated Sept. 21 saying that original terminal was originally planned to be approximately 65,000 square feet with another 9,000 square feet designated by Custom and Border Protection for Federal Inspection Service (FIS) areas.That, however, has changed and now the terminal is planned for $85,000 square feet and the FIS areas to 23,000 square feet. The additional design and architectural work will increase the fees by CH2MHILL by $850,925.00, bringing ti from the original $1,650,000 to $2,500,925.00, which represents approximately 6.6 percent of the estimated construction value.
"The other item that has caused additional design and management effort is the coordination with our local architect, Origo Works," wrote James Kirshbaum, the engineer for CH2MHILL. "As requested by the mayor, we engaged Origo Works to help incorporate "local" architectural features and elements into the original design. This effort extended the conceptual design phase of the project by approximately five months, resulting in significant additional efforts by CH2M, Corgan and Origo Works."
(Click on graphic on right to enlarge.)
It is worth noting that Javier Huerta, one of the principals of Origo Works, graduated from St. Joseph Academy before graduating from the University of Texas at Austin. He and his firm also list work done on the mayor's businesses, including Spanky's Burgers and Rincon de la Paz off Palm Boulevard. Both businesses list their principal as Martinez, and list his law firm's address at 1206 E. Van Buren Street as their mailing address.
The letter from Kirshbaum seems to indicate that the firm hired Origo Works to lend a "local" flavor to the terminal's design and delayed the project for a full five months.
During the procurement stage, there was no mention of Origo Works answering requests for RFPs by the city. The company was apparently hired by CH2MHILL at the urging of Martinez outside the procurement process.
It is interesting to note that one of the projects Origo Works lists "on the board" is the St. Joseph Academy Alumni Student Center, the school which Martinez attended.
12 comments:
Glad I don't live in BROWNSVILLE. Poor People getting BAMBOOZLED.
The mayor's son graduated with Huerta from St. Joe.
A big new airport and extended runway will not bring one new passenger to our town. Total waste of money. Reduce our PUB rates and quit stealing our money.
The voters elected Tony Martinez mayor twice and will probably do it again, so don't complain about his corrupt ways, because people knew what they were getting.
Here we go again; an expensive extension of the airport runway and Tony Martinez is bypassing city procurement policies in order to insert his friends into the chain of receipt of tax dollars. This should be investigated and Mayor Martinez should be held accountable to inserting himself into this to reward one of his son's high school classmates. How many millions will Tony waste during his tenure....millions, millions, millions, millions.
VOTE STUPID GET STUPID.
If you compare Martinez and Trevino to Ahumada, you wonder how these guys don't get indicted. Pat' s problem is that he was not a politician, he was to honest. You knew where you stood with Pat Ahumada.
Rincon de la Paz????????? In Brownsville? I hear it is more Rincon for illegal meeting by city commissioners with the mayor. El blue jean mayor thinks he can pocket as much money as he chooses since no one stops him. El rico se hace mas rico y el pobre mas pendejo y lo van
a elegir otra vez. Quien nos manda por como Dice Charlie Clark . Our name should be
Bob Bear - as the latino friends call us - baboso.
So Tetreau’s call on Facebook for constituents to voice their suggestions on the new terminal was all bs? Why am i not surprised? She’s so full of shit.
Origo Works makes horrible looking buildings. They combine cheap sheet metal with border brick. No thanks Origo, I dont want to land at an airport that looks like Johnny Rockets, Spanky's, or much less that good for nothing Lucio's Orange theory fitness (I give it 2 years btw). There has to be another local architectural firm in the great city of Brownsville that can provide this project with some "local flavor". They could touch base with TSC's student architects that have a bridge program with Texas Tech, im sure theyd be ecstatic to lend a helping hand. Mayor Tony this is obviously a conflict of interest.
Pat padding himself on the back pendejo...
Well, at least some of the money spent on the airport expansion is staying locally. Now if the mayor would force CH2M to hire locally for most of the manual work, nahh that's too much to ask for
EL Nuevo Director
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