"Daley ally wins $30m. Midway pact"

Monday, January 22, 2001

Daley ally wins $30m. Midway pact
BY FRAN SPIELMAN CITY HALL REPORTER
The Chicago (IL) Sun Times


A clout-heavy partnership that includes Mayor Daley's chief fund-raiser in
the black community has won the heated competition for a six-year $30
million contract to manage the new passenger terminal at Midway Airport,
City Hall sources said.

Houston-based Facilities Service Professionals was chosen over three other
bidders to manage the state-of-the-art $761 million Midway terminal
scheduled to open this spring. The 50-year-old existing terminal is managed
by city employees.

Facilities Service Professionals is a joint venture comprising Enron
Building Services Inc., Transportation Building Services and Elzie
Higginbottom's East Lake Management and Development Corp.

Higginbottom could not be reached for comment. In December 1994 he co-hosted
a Daley fund-raiser that dealt a crushing blow to the campaign of mayoral
challenger Joseph Gardner.

"I will never make a recommendation based on politics," said Aviation
Commissioner Thomas Walker, refusing to confirm or deny the selection until
a contract is signed.

Sources familiar with the selection process said Facilities Service
Professionals was chosen for its track record in managing terminal
facilities at other major airports.

The four-year, $5 million-a-year contract includes two, one-year options.
Price was not the only consideration in the competition.

Since 1989, Daley has privatized an array of city services, from parking
ticket collections and towing of abandoned vehicles to City Hall
maintenance, tree stump removal and parking operations at O'Hare and Midway.

Seven years ago, City Hall plunged into airport privatization when it hired
an outside contractor to manage the new International Terminal at O'Hare.

It was the success of Airport Property Management Group that persuaded Daley
to turn the new Midway terminal over to a private contractor, Walker said.

"There are people in the private sector who've come up with techniques and
management experience that surpasses what we've got in the city, and we can
draw on those resources to manage a project that's relatively unique. There
are only a few airports of the size, complexity and level of operation that
Midway has," Walker said.

The contract calls for Facilities Service Professionals to oversee
everything from terminal cleaning and maintenance to landscaping and repair
of mechanical systems. Seventy engineers, electricians and janitors
currently assigned to Midway will be reassigned to O'Hare or transferred to
other city departments. No layoffs are anticipated.

For Higginbottom, the Midway privatization marks the latest in a string of
lucrative deals with City Hall since the 1994 fund-raiser, where he was
denounced by pickets bearing signs that read, "For Sale: Elzie
Kiss-in-bottom."

Higginbottom was a consultant to developers of the new police headquarters
and chosen to build a $4.3 million cultural center on the site of the old
Regal Theater.

In 1996, East Lake received $11 million in interest-free city housing loans
to rehabilitate units at Grand Boulevard and Oakland. The loans were
approved just weeks after four people died in a fire in a rundown South Side
building managed by Higginbottom's company.

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