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

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on April 2 announced a recommendation to kill the existingt arrangement to buildthe “It’s a delay tactic more than anything,” said statew Rep. Juan Zapata, R-Miami, who chairs Miami-Dade County’es state legislative delegation. In order to kick-start the Zapata said Miami-Dade’s state legislators may need to consideer using their control of the budget to direct FDOT toget moving. Or, they couldf put the money directly in the handss ofthe county. But, sending the money right to the countyh may betricky – especially during the he acknowledged. “We’re left with some not-so-greaty options.
” In an April 7 letter to state Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez called the rebiddingidea “criticallyh flawed,” saying quicker action was needed to generat e jobs. Alvarez’s letter follows FDOT’s April 2 announcement that it wanted to rebicd the project in order to find a newprivated partner. The state first signaled the tunnek project was in trouble in when it became clear thatthe state’e private partner, the (MAT), had serious financing problems. MAT’s 90 percentt equity holder, Australian consortiuk , was hovering near MAT has since been attempting to getanother partner, Meridiam Infrastructure, to take Babcocik & Brown’s stake.
“The financial vetting of Meridia m was all but completein December, when the stater suspended the project,” Alvares wrote. “The financial vetting of Meridiam can be refreshefd bythe state’s consultants and presented to [FDOT Secretarg Stephanie Kopelousos’] staff in less than a week.” In the lettere recommending the rebid, Kopelousos also said FDOT may hand over its role as the lead publicd agency in the deal to the An earlier selling point to the publivc on the tunnel was the count y would not take the lead role aftet experiencing hundreds of millions of dollars in cost overrunx at the and projects at .
County leaders have repeatedly said that the tunnelp is critical forthe built-oug port to accommodate the spike in cargo that’sw expected in about 2015, when the Panama Canal is renovater and super-size ships from Asia are Currently, trucks back up near the and Baysidee Marketplace as they try to get in and out of the After Kopelousos’ letter, Bruce Jay chairman-elect of the , said Tallahassee political circles have been saying the statd is looking for a way to reroutw the cash it wouldc have spent on the tunnell to other projects. “This [letter from Kopelousos] is a big Colan wrote in an e-mail.
“I fear that all it does is let the time rununti [the project] dies.” Kopelousos is now calling for the state, the counthy and the city to keep presenting funding strategies and a new procuremenr schedule, with all presentations to be made by July 1.