Damaged statues, improper concrete work, broken pipes will get fresh attention
Although a series of high-profile construction blunders left Armstrong Park unusable for most of the summer, work will soon resume under a new general contractor.
View full sizeLouis Armstrong Park is fenced-off and in disrepair, its renovation stalled after the Ray Nagin-era contractor was kicked off the job. Peabody Construction will be in charge of the work, said Deputy Mayor Cedric Grant, who called the park "a priority for this administration." Peabody submitted the second lowest bid in the original competition for the contract, he said.
In July, Mayor Mitch Landrieu ordered A.M.E. Disaster Recovery Services to stop work after its crews cracked part of the park's beloved namesake statue, separating the trumpeter's left shoe from the statue's base.
The project has become politicized because Mayor Ray Nagin trumpeted the project as something super-spectacular, promising "you're going to be blown away," and fast-tracked the work so that he could unveil the Roots of Music Cultural Sculpture Garden in his final days in office.
And while some say that Nagin has been unfairly vilified for a contractor's mistakes, others have used the flop to illustrate what they say are larger failures. "This project is just another example of a deal the Nagin administration improperly executed," Landrieu said in July, two months after taking office.
Small businesses caught in crossfire
Caught in the resulting legal morass are several small subcontractors and suppliers who say they finished their work well and on time but have yet to be paid. In late May, as the city launched an investigation, it stopped making payments for the job.
That dealt a heavy blow to small firms whose work is unrelated to the job's controversial concrete and excavation work.
"It's crippled us," said Danah Malone, operations manager for Malone Electrical Services in Gentilly, which is waiting on roughly $200,000 for work that was approved by project managers months ago, she said.
Malone described how her family has laid off more than a third of its staff, maxed out its credit line, delayed payments to its suppliers and dipped into personal accounts to make payroll. That despite the fact that her firm, like others, worked round the clock on the park in April to get ready for the sculpture-garden dedication.
Malone racked up massive labor costs for the last week before the dedication, to get all the lights working and, as requested, hook up a temporary electrical source for the Congo Square fountain so that it would be lit and functional for the evening event.
Malone, like some other subcontractors, is a certified disadvantaged business, clearly not big enough to wait out "a convoluted legal process," she said.
Few details were available about the negotiations between the city and HCC Surety Group, the guarantor that must pay to complete a construction job if A.M.E. can't.
City is 'moving forward'
HCC conducted its own investigation and submitted a proposal at the end of July, said attorney Michael Zisa, who declined to say what had been proposed.
But Grant noted in his e-mail message that A.M.E. and its surety believe that the company can still finish the job, a notion that the city has rejected. "We are intent on moving forward with a new, responsible contractor," he wrote.
Grant also pledged that the Armstrong statue would be restored and all A.M.E. subcontractors would be paid.
A.M.E.'s catalog of mistakes is extensive. Besides damaging the Armstrong statue, the company incorrectly poured concrete pathways several times; they had to be ripped out and repoured, then ripped out again.
Some of the firm's tractor drivers careened around the park, damaging curbing and other sculptures, knocking a light pole into the lagoon and toppling a 50-foot palm tree. Its machine operators also tugged a few other statues around by ropes, broke manholes and sprinkler pipes and cut buried power and phone lines.
Plumber Wayne Encalarde, 57, saw very little of that, because he completed most of his work before the cement work began.
Waiting on the city money has "damn near made me lose my business," said Encalarde, who learned plumbing from his dad as a teenager and now runs the family business, WJE LLC.
A plumber's tour of the park
But, as Encalarde gave a plumber's tour of the park last week, it's clear that he's proud of his work: the pump, piping, and nozzles that create a curving arc of spray in the fountain behind the Mahalia Jackson Theater for Performing Arts, the lagoon he emptied so that cement masons could do work, the dozens of pipes he repaired after A.M.E. excavation crews dug into them.
He recalled early-morning calls from A.M.E. after his other work was done, asking him to make emergency repairs or hiring him to mark for excavation crews a landmine of live piping underneath the park's wide central sidewalk, which follows the route that used to be a residential city street, St. Ann, before the park was built.
Encalarde last worked for A.M.E. during the Sculpture Garden's dedication.
The temporary electric line couldn't power all of the controls for the Congo Square fountain, he said, so if anything went awry, it needed to be manually fixed. "So I came here in a suit, with my work clothes in my truck, and they paid me to man the fountain that night," he said.
He sighed. "Or they were supposed to pay me," he said.
Katy Reckdahl can be reached at kreckdahl@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3396.