The raging dispute over the secretive award of $83 million in parks and recreation contracts to friends of Mayor Adrian Fenty might never have happened had the District’s highly regarded school construction chief been allowed to do the work instead, city leaders say.
The D.C. Council last December directed Allen Lew, chief of the Office of Public Education Facilities Modernization, to stick to school work only. It was a slap at Fenty in the midst of an ongoing war between the two branches. And it was the best thing that could have happened to Fenty’s buddies in the construction industry.
“If these parks and recreation center projects were under the jurisdiction of Allen Lew then they probably would have been done by now,” Ward 2 Councilman Jack Evans told The Examiner on Friday, a sentiment echoed by other government officials. “But the council voted not to, in a show of solidarity to the committee chairman Harry Thomas. In retrospect, I don’t know if that was such a good idea.”
A year ago Saturday, Fenty stood outside the Bald Eagle Recreation Center in Southwest to announce that Lew would take over construction duties for the Department of Parks and Recreation.
DPR lacks the expertise to effectively manage capital projects, Fenty said at the time. Let Lew do the construction “in the most excellent way,” the mayor said, while then-Parks Director Clark Ray keys on programming.
Council members were furious. Thomas immediately proposed emergency legislation directing Lew to manage school projects only. The resolution was adopted unanimously.
“I’m going to be very vigilant about ensuring the parks and recreation budget maintains autonomy without the mayor going around the process,” Thomas said at the time.
The mayor went around the process.
Fenty aides quietly struck a deal with the quasi-independent D.C. Housing Authority, which used DPR money to award Banneker Ventures a $4.2 million construction management contract. Banneker is owned by Fenty fraternity brother Omar Karim.
Banneker, recent hearings revealed, was to direct the subcontracting for a dozen DPR projects totaling roughly $83 million. Several deals went to firms with Fenty ties, and the contracts in excess of $1 million were not sent to the council as the law requires.
The Fenty administration’s goal, City Administrator Neil Albert told the council, was to be “very aggressive at moving these projects forward quickly.” But the work has stalled as the council investigates.
