Shiloh
Editor, Senior Moderator
Source: https://chicago.suntimes.com/2020/8...construction-mcpier-lori-lightfoot-army-corps
McCormick Place hospital’s cost to taxpayers? $1.7 million per patient. How the deal happened.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s aides defend her push for little-used coronavirus hospital built by Walsh Construction as important ‘insurance policy’ at a time of ‘immense emergency.’
By Tim Novak and Robert Herguth Aug 14, 2020, 5:30am CDT
McCormick Place hospital’s cost to taxpayers? $1.7 million per patient. How the deal happened.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s aides defend her push for little-used coronavirus hospital built by Walsh Construction as important ‘insurance policy’ at a time of ‘immense emergency.’
By Tim Novak and Robert Herguth Aug 14, 2020, 5:30am CDT
Taxpayers spent nearly $66 million fashioning McCormick Place into an emergency coronavirus hospital with 2,750 beds this past spring amid fears that COVID-19 patients would overwhelm hospitals in the Chicago area.
Those fears turned out to be unfounded. Just 38 patients were transferred to the sprawling convention center — meaning taxpayers’ cost for the makeshift hospital turned out to be more than $1.7 million per patient, on average.
But top aides to Mayor Lori Lightfoot say her decision to initiate the project with the federal government and the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority was an important “insurance policy” at a time of “immense emergency.”
“It’s something I’m incredibly proud of,” says Samir Mayekar, Lightfoot’s deputy mayor for economic and neighborhood development who says the money was “not spent in vain.”
He also notes that the medical equipment is being stored and can be redeployed if needed.
To complete the McCormick Place project, the authority — a city-state governmental body known as McPier that runs the convention center and owns Navy Pier — tapped Walsh Construction, a politically connected Chicago company that’s built everything from highways to high-rises.
That followed a selection process so frenzied that McPier hired Walsh just hours after receiving proposals from three construction companies, according to interviews and records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times that show:
McPier solicited proposals from three giants in construction: Walsh, Pepper Construction and Power Construction Company. And it hired Walsh even though Power said it either would forgo any fees or donate them to pandemic relief because it didn’t want to profit from the pandemic. Walsh charged $65.9 million, including more than $5.1 million in fees, records show.
An official with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — which hired McPier to build the facility, for which the federal government is covering at least 75 percent of the costs — said in internal emails that Power or Pepper was the best choice. But that decision was left to McPier, which picked Walsh, saying its rates were not “significantly different” than the others and that it “had the most experience . . . working with the [Army Corps] and working on emergency projects.”...
McCormick Place hospital’s cost to taxpayers? $1.7 million per patient. How the deal happened.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s aides defend her push for little-used coronavirus hospital built by Walsh Construction as important ‘insurance policy’ at a time of ‘immense emergency.’
By Tim Novak and Robert Herguth Aug 14, 2020, 5:30am CDT
McCormick Place hospital’s cost to taxpayers? $1.7 million per patient. How the deal happened.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s aides defend her push for little-used coronavirus hospital built by Walsh Construction as important ‘insurance policy’ at a time of ‘immense emergency.’
By Tim Novak and Robert Herguth Aug 14, 2020, 5:30am CDT
Taxpayers spent nearly $66 million fashioning McCormick Place into an emergency coronavirus hospital with 2,750 beds this past spring amid fears that COVID-19 patients would overwhelm hospitals in the Chicago area.
Those fears turned out to be unfounded. Just 38 patients were transferred to the sprawling convention center — meaning taxpayers’ cost for the makeshift hospital turned out to be more than $1.7 million per patient, on average.
But top aides to Mayor Lori Lightfoot say her decision to initiate the project with the federal government and the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority was an important “insurance policy” at a time of “immense emergency.”
“It’s something I’m incredibly proud of,” says Samir Mayekar, Lightfoot’s deputy mayor for economic and neighborhood development who says the money was “not spent in vain.”
He also notes that the medical equipment is being stored and can be redeployed if needed.
To complete the McCormick Place project, the authority — a city-state governmental body known as McPier that runs the convention center and owns Navy Pier — tapped Walsh Construction, a politically connected Chicago company that’s built everything from highways to high-rises.
That followed a selection process so frenzied that McPier hired Walsh just hours after receiving proposals from three construction companies, according to interviews and records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times that show:
McPier solicited proposals from three giants in construction: Walsh, Pepper Construction and Power Construction Company. And it hired Walsh even though Power said it either would forgo any fees or donate them to pandemic relief because it didn’t want to profit from the pandemic. Walsh charged $65.9 million, including more than $5.1 million in fees, records show.
An official with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — which hired McPier to build the facility, for which the federal government is covering at least 75 percent of the costs — said in internal emails that Power or Pepper was the best choice. But that decision was left to McPier, which picked Walsh, saying its rates were not “significantly different” than the others and that it “had the most experience . . . working with the [Army Corps] and working on emergency projects.”...