With the contractors responding to the Inspector General’s audit findings with such a haughty attitude, perhaps the county should appoint Miami Police Chief John Timoney to sit in as the PAC’s new project manager.” 

A.C. Weinstein
Columnist

The recently released audit on the Performing Art Center (PAC) construction by the Miami-Dade Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has disclosed a number of findings that now make it difficult to assess the quality of the project. Nearly halfway through construction, even with its extraordinarily high profile and unprecedented level of public scrutiny, it took an investigative agency’s audit to tell us something is amiss.

While the county administration and building and code departments sit on their hands, it took the findings of the independent OIG report to reveal the three contracting firms hired by Miami-Dade to build the PAC have failed to provide the adequate and contractually required measures of quality control, from inspections not performed to poor record keeping.

The contractors responded to most of the deficiencies in the audit by saying it’s just a breakdown in communication and that the quality of construction is good. The county administrators say the contractors will now do better. But the more forthright OIG found the contractors were somewhat evasive and even misleading in their responses to the audit findings.

Even the apologetic county administrators are now concerned about lack of quality on structural work where large numbers of people will congregate and add weight during performance intermissions. It appears that the programs of quality control with the PAC’s construction are now as elusive as its expected opening.

Now pushed back to 2006, the opening’s delay will only add millions of dollars more to the cost overruns already in dispute between the county and contractors. A projected eighteen-month delay is estimated to cost about $20 million, the same amount the PAC is looking to charge for corporate naming rights.

Depending from where the numbers are crunched, the bottom line cost to actually complete the PAC could run from $344 to $377 million. The estimated annual operating tab is $15.2 million. Yearly revenue is projected to bring in $12.5 million, which translates to an annual operating deficit of $2.7 million.

With its 2200 seat symphony hall, 2480 seat ballet/opera house and 200 seat studio/theater, the PAC is touted to become the epicenter of the region’s cultural experience and provide the long awaited lift to Biscayne Boulevard. Planners compare the PAC’s impact on Downtown Miami with how Lincoln Center rejuvenated New York City’s West Side.

As a resident of New York City during that period of cultural revival, Lincoln Center in fact, did turn around a stagnant West Side neighborhood into a bustling and exciting off Broadway urban adventure. Investments in surrounding real estate reached new demands while area restaurants and outdoor cafes were suddenly packed with a long sought-after demographic that found itself drawn to the creative winds of the new Lincoln Center complex.

And just as the proposed expansion of the New World Symphony in Miami Beach should help round off the cultural experience surrounding Lincoln Road, the PAC should bring even more of a positive impact to one of Miami’s more visible and downtrodden intersections.

With its unacceptable audit findings, continuing delays, construction cost overruns and projected annual operational deficit, the question that’s still being raised, though, is the PAC’s value worth its hefty price tag? That’s a tough question with even tougher answers, particularly as the project passes the no turning back stage in architectural design, planning and construction.

Assuming it will have an opening day, the PAC’s perceived success or failure may hinge on its first full year of operation. According to its agreement with Miami-Dade, the PAC Trust will have to fork over $63 million to the county one year to the day after it opens. Fundraising is not what it was at the end of the last decade.

With an estimated annual operational deficit of $2.7 million, that first year’s obligation to the county could run to more than $65 million. If there’s any thing positive to be spun from the eighteen-month delay into 2006, perhaps the pushed back opening could offer the PAC and county the time to revise that agreement.

After all, it was the OIG and not the county administrators that found a lack of quality control in the PAC’s construction. With the contractors responding to the audit’s findings in such a haughty attitude, perhaps the county should appoint Miami Police Chief John Timoney to sit in as the PAC’s new project manager. That would abruptly end the contractor’s evasive and misleading responses to the OIG’s audit findings. 

There’s a lot at stake. Miami Beach is contributing nearly $6 million per year in convention development taxes while the PAC is receiving another $10 million in state grants and additional convention development taxes collected countywide. The largest revenue source is from the PAC’s foundation with more than forty million dollars raised. PAC’s fundraisers will need to double that effort, not an easy task in today’s world where priorities are pointing to other needs.

The OIG’s audit was disappointing but hardly a surprise. From the airport to Watson Island, construction cost overruns and delays with most projects in Miami and throughout the county are not only expected, but appear to be part of a natural process often referred to as business as usual. 

With the long awaited PAC about to cross that halfway point in construction and with so much on the line for its supporters, Downtown Miami and the region, there really needs to be a stronger hands-on attitude from the county. At this stage in the game, there’s little more to do but to hope for the best. Or just bring in Timoney.