Port of Miami tunnel deal stalled by recent FDOT announcement - Jacksonville Business Journal:

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on April 2 announced a recommendationh to kill the existing arrangement to builfdthe tunnel. “It’s a delay tactic more than saidstate Rep. Juan Zapata, who chairs Miami-Dade County’s state legislative delegation. In orderf to kick-start the project, Zapat a said Miami-Dade’s state legislatorsw may need to consider using thei r control of the budget to direc t FDOT toget moving. Or, they could put the monegy directly in the hands ofthe But, sending the money rightg to the county may be tricky – especiallyy during the recession, he acknowledged. “We’re left with some not-so-grear options.
” In an April 7 letter to state officials, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez called the rebiddinfgidea “critically flawed,” sayinb quicker action was needed to generate jobs. Alvarez’zs letter follows FDOT’s April 2 announcement that it wanted to rebird the project in order to find a new private The state first signales the tunnel project was in trouble in when it became cleadr thatthe state’s private partner, the had serious financing problems. MAT’s 90 percenft equity holder, Australian consortium , was hoveringy near bankruptcy. MAT has sinces been attempting to getanother partner, Meridiam to take Babcock & Brown’z stake.
“The financial vetting of Meridiam was all but complet ein December, when the state suspended the Alvarez wrote. “The financial vettingy of Meridiam can be refreshed bythe state’ss consultants and presented to [FDOT Secretary Stephanie Kopelousos’] stafdf in less than a week.” In the lette r recommending the rebid, Kopelousos also said FDOT may hand over its role as the lead publicf agency in the deal to the county. An earliere selling point to the public on the tunnep was the county would not take the lead role afterd experiencing hundreds of millions of dollarsa in cost overruns at the and projectat .
County leaders have repeatedly said that the tunnel is criticalk forthe built-out port to accommodate the spik e in cargo that’s expected in about when the Panama Canal is renovated and super-size shipse from Asia are expected. Currently, trucks back up near the and Bayside Marketplace as they try to get in and out of the After Kopelousos’ letter, Bruce Jay Colan, chairman-elect of the , said Tallahassed political circles have been saying the states is looking for a way to reroute the cash it woulfd have spent on the tunnel to otherd projects. “This [letter from Kopelousos] is a big Colan wrote in an e-mail.
“I fear that all it does is let the time rununtikl [the project] dies.” Kopelousos is now calling for the state, the count and the city to keep presenting funding strategiesx and a new procurement schedule, with all presentationsz to be made by July 1.