Newport company to oversee school repairs

Danette Goulet

NEWPORT-MESA -- With offices only 10 minutes from the Newport-Mesa

school campuses, McCarthy Building Co. in Newport Beach was an ideal

choice to oversee the repairs of crumbling schools, school officials

said.

The Newport-Mesa Unified School District Board of Education voted

Tuesday to hire the firm after a glowing recommendation from district

staff and the citizen oversight committee.

“It was a very enthusiastic recommendation we made to the school board

[Tuesday] night,” said Tony Petros, chairman of the advisory oversight

committee. “In terms of their ability to do the work, they demonstrated

that they had the know-how hands and shoulders above the competition.”

The 31-member committee Petros heads is the group charged with

ensuring the $110-million bond voters approved in June and $53 million in

state matching funds are spent correctly.

The appointment of McCarthy as the project management firm marks the

group’s first major decision and probably its most important.

The largest privately held construction company in the United States,

McCarthy has been in business for 137 years and has had offices in

Newport Beach since 1984, said W. Carter Chappell, president of the

Southern California division.

It is that local tie and attention to local detail that cinched the

deal for McCarthy, said Mike Fine, the district’s assistant

superintendent of business services.

“We never heard from them about national and world experience despite

the fact that they were a huge company,” Fine said. “They were focused on

Newport-Mesa, and that showed us that they understood our needs.”

McCarthy also brought with them an impressive team, which included two

“top-notch” sub-consultants, Fine said.

Along with McCarthy, Newport-Mesa will have the services of Capitol

Program Management, a Sacramento-based company that will aid in project

scheduling, which is the first phase of the work to be done in the next

three to four months, Chappell said.

A second firm that came as part of the McCarthy package was the

Mission Viejo-based California Financial Services, which will work to get

the district the optimal amount of outside funding from both state and

federal levels.

Chappell and district officials hope to iron out a contract in the

next several weeks, which should afford McCarthy about 6% to 8% of the

bond proceeds -- roughly $10 million -- over the five- to seven-year life

of the project, Chappell said.

Once that’s done, things will really get rolling, Petros said.

“Now is when the rubber meets the road,” said an excited Petros. “We

want to continue to move forward. I’m sitting with 30 other community

members who are just waiting to get going. We want this thing underway.”