Currently, almost the entire physical structure has been erected, but the computerized system designed to pick up a car at the entrance on the first floor and deliver it to an empty spot on an upper level has yet to be installed. And the firm hired to install the automated system, Robotic Parking, was fired on Oct. 5 by the Belcor/Megan Group (BMG), the general contractor overseeing the job.
The more than 700 residents on the waiting list for a space may just have to keep waiting. The soonest the facility might open up is "sometime in April" according to Frank Belgiovine, the president of BMG, who is looking for other firms to do the work. Original plans called for a grand opening one year after the construction began in January of 1999.
Robotic Parking officials said last week that they were on the verge of completing their work when they were terminated. The garage would have opened on Nov. 11 if they had been left to do their job, they said.
Robotic Parking, based in Ohio and Germany, has filed suit against the Hackensack-based BMG, seeking $1.2 million in back payments and other damages.
Robotic speaks out
While Robotic Parking officials spent their last day on the job filming their work in an effort to show as a part of the suit that the automated part of the garage was close to completion, BMG officials aren't so sure. Belgiovine of BMG said that Robotic Parking was dismissed because he believed that the company would never be able to build an automated parking system as it had pledged. "They simply couldn't do the job they said they could do," Belgiovine said Thursday.
Hogwash, said the president of Robotic Parking, Gerhard Haag. The real problem, Haag contended, was that poor planning on the part of BMG caused delay after delay. According to the original plans, Robotic was supposed to have 178 days to install the automated features of the garage after BMG was done building the physical structure, but, Haag charged, mistakes on the part of BMG cut that window down to less than two weeks. Despite the problems, Robotic officials said last week that they could have had the garage up and running by Nov. 11 if they had been left to do their work.
Haag said Thursday, "[BMG] knew that they were going to be a year late with this and they had no one to blame, so they decided to make us the bad guy. It's too bad, because if they had not, the garage would be up and running today."
Just who is "the bad guy" matters more in this situation than it might in others. This is the first-ever automated parking garage built in the United States. If it opens and it is successful, chances are that the contractor will garner a number of offers from other cities to build similar structures. In fact, representatives from Manhattan and other parking-poor communities have already made site visits to 916 Garden to gauge whether a similar structure ought to be constructed in their cities.
In his efforts to prove that his firm was not responsible for the problems, Haag used, as an example, a construction mistake that left parking lanes on the eastern side of the building slightly askew of those on the western side. This was a "major problem" according to Haag, since an elevator system is to run up and down the center of the building picking up and dropping off cars. The cars are shuttled back and forth on large steel palettes that slide neatly into about a dozen lanes.
The lack of alignment between the lanes meant that the elevators would have to make extra adjustments to pick up and drop off cars depending on whether or not they were on the eastern or western side of the building, Haag said.
"We had to do more calculations, more tests," said Haag. "It's more complicated."
The problem took Haag's team of four engineers three months and more than $100,000 of work to sort out and test, Haag said.
Belgiovine did not dispute that there were alignment problems. But he said that the alignment problems weren't the issue. He said that after working with Robotics for more than a year, he no longer believed the company could do the job.
"In August we received information from anonymous sources that they were having problems with their software, which is basically the brains behind the garage," Belgiovine charged. "We approached them and they denied that fact, but additional research showed that we were right. Even though we had paid for 99 percent of the technology, they could not deliver it."
When asked what additional research Belgiovine had conducted, he said that he had gone to Germany with his legal counsel to look into Haag's credentials as an engineer with experience constructing automated parking facilities.
"We investigated his background," said Belgiovine. "We investigated his resume more in depth. We wanted to see if we were dealing with the right person. And what we found were more holes than are in Swiss cheese." Belgiovine said that after paying Robotics more than $3 million and setting numerous deadlines that came and went, he was fed up and he decided to terminate his relationship with Robotics.
But Haag was incredulous that anyone would question his experience. Although the only garage that Robotics has constructed is a small demonstration unit at their plant in Ohio, he says that he built automated garages with Krupp, a leading engineering firm in Germany, for years.
There were other problems not related to the automated system that arose unexpectedly, pushing the project's timetable back.
Contaminated soil, which the contractor did not realize was on site, was discovered and had to be removed. "That delayed us," said Belgiovine, "which meant that we got pushed back into the winter months and that slowed us down some more."
Court will decide
The court has yet to decide who is at fault, but it did deny an effort on the part of Robotics to block further construction on the site. In a ruling on Oct. 16, Judge Martin Greenberg said that there was no aspect of the contract that barred BMG from dismissing the sub-contractor and hiring another one. The question of whether or not BMG can pass information obtained from Robotics on to a new subcontractor has not been looked at by the court yet.
Belgiovine says that he has narrowed down the choices to two companies, but Haag, who is aware of the work that both do, says that there is no way they will meet the April deadline.
"They have not built one automated garage," Haag charged.
Haag also said that at this point, his engineers would be able to get the project up and running in 72 days. He said he would still like to complete the job.
"This is my baby and I would like to see it through," he says. "But I am not stuck on this. We are moving on, too."
Residents frustrated
Meanwhile, residents have been left scratching their heads.
"The most frustrating thing about this is we see the garage there and we can't use it," said John Branciforte, a resident who lives a block away from the garage. Branciforte has been concerned about the garage for some time. Often, he is the only member of the public who attends parking authority meetings where the garage is discussed. "This was a huge gamble they took to be first in the nation with this, and I don't understand why they could not wait for someone else," he said. "We are the guinea pig for everyone else when for the same amount of money we could have built a 900-car garage at the edge of town."
Having committed to building this garage, city officials seem intent on doing what they can to complete the project's construction and convince the public that it was not that big a risk.
Though the city has not taken a side in the litigation, it has asked the court for a seat at the table when the issue comes up.
"We only have one message," said Joan Damora, an attorney with Murray, Murray and Corrigan, the law firm that is representing the city in the matter. "We don't want anything to delay the opening of this garage."
Further hearings are expected in Judge Greenberg's chambers in January.
Post a Comment