MassDOT will start over with ‘clean slate’ on the service plaza process

After their original bidder backed out amid conflict of interest statements MassDOT is starting the proposal process for their highway amenity plazas over from the beginning It s a clean slate MassDOT Highway Administrator Jonathan Gulliver informed the Herald on Wednesday We re really going to take the time to get it right The request for proposal redux comes following a months-long saga of court battles and media coverage of what might normally be a bland and routine contract bidding process Before all the drama the story was no more complicated than the fact that MassDOT needed a new operator to manage its highway institution plazas Their original bidding process led them to select Dublin-based Applegreen for a -year lease However Applegreen backed out after winning the bid citing an inability to arrive at definitive terms for the redevelopment of motorway provision areas in Massachusetts Their sudden decision to step away followed months of assertions from the losing bidder Waltham-based Global Partners that MassDOT s selection board chairman had been communicating with Applegreen s representatives and business partners According to Global that alone should have led to the Irish company s removal from contention Gulliver advised the Herald that the previous bidding process had been routed through the department s real estate company The new process will go through MassDOT s complex projects office he announced which is more used to handling large-scale projects The highway administrator had no new RFP schedule to offer other than that the process will likely take the department well into the New Year The timeline is still uncertain he noted The very first thing that MassDOT will do Gulliver stated is really take a beat Look at where we think we can improve procurement He explained the department will likely take a minimal weeks maybe a couple of months to get their bearings again We re going to work to make it a better procurement make it more more competitive and really focus on getting that best value for both taxpayers and the commuters that are going to be using these things on a regular basis he disclosed The current plaza operators were due to see their contracts expire on January Gulliver announced they will see their agreements extended and that MassDOT would be reaching out to discuss the terms of those extensions this week In the meantime he stated the department will be casting a wider net than they had previously We re going to look at the lessons learned that we had as we were starting implementation but also we want to do selected industry sounding We want to talk to the original six bidders find out from the four who ultimately did not submit and weren t the finalists what about it did they see that caused them to withdraw he announced Eric Slifka the president and CEO of Global Partners perhaps aware of the coming announcement addressed the MassDOT board of directors during their regular meeting on Tuesday just before they revealed their plan to start the bidding over According to Slifka the past five months have been distinctive for his company which doesn t usually find itself in the headlines But as a fourth generation Massachusetts company we ascertained it necessary to speak up when we saw that the Commonwealth wasn t getting the best value It wasn t about politics or publicity it was about doing what s right for Massachusetts taxpayers and the long-term prosperity of the state we ve fueled for nearly a century he announced Now that Applegreen has withdrawn their bid Slifka announced the state can move forward with clarity and confidence And global is ready to deliver he notified the board Gulliver commented that MassDOT considered both moving starting the process over and accepting the bid previously offered by Global Partners In the end he explained even though either class would have been legal the department decided to begin again We really did consider all of our options here he explained We really felt this was the best one the best way to get more competition the best way to get more innovation and really give everybody the product that they are looking for he explained This is a emerging story