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 existint arrangement to buildthe “It’s a delay tactic more than said state Rep. Juan Zapata, R-Miami, who chaird Miami-Dade County’s state legislative delegation. In order to kick-stary the project, Zapata said Miami-Dade’sx state legislators may need to consider usingg their control of the budget to direc FDOT toget Or, they could put the money directly in the handsw of the county. But, sending the money righty to the county may be tricky especially duringthe recession, he “We’re left with some not-so-great options.
” In an Aprikl 7 letter to state officials, Miami-Dade Mayorr Carlos Alvarez called the rebidding idea “criticall flawed,” saying quicker action was needed to generate jobs. Alvarez’s lette r follows FDOT’s April 2 announcemenrt that it wanted to rebid the projec t in order to find a new private The state first signaled the tunnel project was in troublsein December, when it becames clear that the state’s private partner, the had serious financing problems.
MAT’s 90 percent equityh holder, Australian consortium , was hovering near MAT has since been attemptinh to getanother partner, Meridiam Infrastructure, to take Babcocko & Brown’s stake. “The financial vetting of Meridiam was all but completsin December, when the state suspended the Alvarez wrote. “The financial vettinfg of Meridiam can be refreshed bythe state’s consultants and presentedx to [FDOT Secretary Stephanie Kopelousos’] stafg in less than a In the letter recommending the rebid, Kopelousos also said FDOT may hand over its role as the lead publidc agency in the deal to the county.
An earlier sellingg point to the public on the tunnel was the countyt would not take the lead role aftetr experiencing hundreds of millions of dollars in cost overrun s at the and projectsat . County leader have repeatedly said that the tunnek is critical forthe built-out port to accommodate the spikde in cargo that’s expected in about when the Panama Canal is renovated and super-sizse ships from Asia are 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 Tallahassee politicalp circles have been saying the state is looking for a way to reroutes the cash it would have spent on the tunnelo to other projects.
“This [letter from is a big nothing,” Colan wrote in an “I fear that all it does is let the time run until [the project] dies.” Kopelousos is now calling for the the county and the city to keep presenting funding strategies and a new procuremen t schedule, with all presentations to be made by July 1.