Fort Lauderdale narrows unsolicited City Hall proposals to four teams; presentations set for Dec. 2

The Fort Lauderdale City Commission directed staff on Oct. 7 to advance four developer teams for further review in the unsolicited proposals process to build a new City Hall.

The commission’s decision followed a presentation by Jonathan Jordan and Alan Cohen of Jacobs, the city’s owner's representative, who summarized Jacobs’ review of six unsolicited proposals and the preliminary evaluation criteria used to screen them. Ben Rogers, assistant city manager, told the commission the city had received six proposals (one original from Fort Lauderdale Civic Partners and five competitors) and that Jacobs’ first task order was to develop preliminary criteria and conduct an initial pass/fail review.

“The first task order that we did with Jacobs was to help us with the review of these initial unsolicited proposals,” Ben Rogers said, introducing the Jacobs presenters. Jonathan Jordan of Jacobs summarized the firms, the evaluation criteria and the team-level review that focused on developer capacity, municipal and office-building experience, P3 experience and compliance with the state P3 statute.

Jordan told the commission Jacobs found one team met all nine screening criteria and several others met most of the criteria. “Of the 6 proposals, it was found that, 1 firm met all the criteria or a 100%, which was Fort Lauderdale City Hall Partners,” Jordan said. Jacobs recommended shortlisting multiple firms for additional review rather than eliminating most applicants at this stage.

Mayor Dean Trantalis and several commissioners said they wanted to expand the review beyond a single…