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Minority Contracting in Spotlight of Hartford Baseball Stadium Construction

Members of the Hartford Stadium Authority listen to concerns over minority hiring at its new minor league stadium.
Jeff Cohen
/
WNPR
Members of the Hartford Stadium Authority listen to concerns over minority hiring at its new minor league stadium.

"Those black and Puerto Rican workers that you see standing right there? I hire them. I put them to work."
Colin Dawkins

One of the great promises of Hartford’s $56 million, city-funded minor league baseball stadium was that it would bring good jobs to minority contractors and workers. According to the developers, it has. They say they will meet or exceed its targets for minority hiring.

 

But that doesn’t mean it’s an easy goal to achieve, and it doesn’t mean every minority contractor that bids on a job will get one.

 

Colin Dawkins runs MCM Acoustics. He’s a Hartford-based minority contractor who said he spent $50,000 to bid on a series of jobs for the stadium, but he didn’t get the work. Instead, a firm out of Boston that bid significantly lower than him did. And he told the members of the Hartford Stadium Authority and the packed room at City Hall Thursday exactly how he felt about it.

 

“When they’re telling me that they’re giving the job to somebody else in Boston that’s from Boston, and I hire 80 percent, 70 percent Hartford residents on my jobs, as a minority contractor, from the union, to me, that’s crap,” Dawkins said. “Ninety percent of the guys you see standing there, they get a paycheck from MCM Acoustics…Those black and Puerto Rican workers that you see standing right there? I hire them. I put them to work.

 

“And that’s the most important part to me,” Dawkins said. “As a black man, I can work in the union and get my wages to feed my family. And you can ask them. When I get work, do they work? And that’s all I’m saying to you guys.”

 

Dawkins had a litany of other complaints, including that the project documents were a continual moving target and that he couldn’t get straight answers from Centerplan when it came to the exact details they were looking for.

 

In response, developer Jason Rudnick conceded that the job had evolved and that it was complicated. But he said Dawkins got the same information everyone else did. He told the stadium authority again that his firm, Centerplan Development, planned to beat the requirements the city had set for it when it comes to hiring both minority laborers and firms.

 

“Not only are we going to meet the requirements that you’ve put upon us,” Rudnick said. “We plan on exceeding them.”

Credit Centerplan Construction
The construction site for the new stadium for the Hartford Yard Goats.
The situation frustrated city officials, who looked to a city procurement rule.

But Dawkins’ bid was just too high, Rudnick said. Dawkins said he was initially told it was $500,000 higher than the low bid on a $2,350,000 job. He was later told it was more like $300,0000 higher. Nevertheless, he didn’t get the job.

 

“In the case of Colin Dawkins, the numbers just didn’t work,” Rudnick said. “In this situation, Colin was not the lowest and we did have the discussion so we could explain the whole entire process to him...We’ve had this discussion. We may not have all liked what the outcome was. But we did have this discussion.”

 

The outcome of the discussions was that an out-of-state firm named Manganaro got the work. Dawkins was offered to partner with the majority firm, but he said that didn’t make any business sense for him.

 

The situation frustrated city officials, who looked to a city procurement rule. It says that a minority contractor that comes within 15 percent of a low bid can have the chance to match it and take the job.

 

Even though the city is paying for this job, and even though it will own the stadium when it’s complete, its procurement rules don’t apply. Technically, this isn't a city job. In short, the city said, there's a tradeoff between getting the job done with a guaranteed price and following city procurement.

“They’re providing us a $56 million guaranteed maximum price for them to deliver the stadium to us,” city Chief Operating Officer Darrell Hill told the authority. “Said differently, they have to be able to manage their work so that they can control their price. Following our procurement procedures wouldn’t allow for that.”

 

But, through discussion, it was clear that Dawkins was not given that chance -- nor was Centerplan obligated to offer it to him.

 

The entire situation frustrated authority members, including Treasurer Adam Cloud.

 

“I’m a little concerned that the intent is not reflective with the results when it comes to hiring minority, local, women, veteran firms,” Cloud said.  “If a bid package comes in and that bid package is from a Hartford individual, and there’s a spread differential then I prefer that preference to be given to a local contractor provided it’s not costing us more money.”

 

Council President Shawn Wooden also sits on the authority. He said he didn’t like what he was seeing in the case of Colin Dawkins -- despite the project’s current and projected success with hiring minority workers and contractors. If the cost can be matched, Wooden said, the local contractor who hires local workers should get the job.

 

“Mr. Dawkins -- he’s as reputable as they come, minority contractor, he’s union, he’s all these buckets, and he’s engaged and he hires Hartford workers,” Wooden said. “So the value of allowing MCM to do that work at the same price is exponentially more than bringing a company in from Massachusetts to do that work.”

 

The difference, Wooden said, is simple. Whether Centerplan hires the firm from Hartford or Boston, the product will be the same. But if the company hires the out-of-town firm, the economic benefit will be out of town, too, he said.

Jeff Cohen started in newspapers in 2001 and joined Connecticut Public in 2010, where he worked as a reporter and fill-in host. In 2017, he was named news director. Then, in 2022, he became a senior enterprise reporter.

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