Just one look is all it took
Dave Brooks
Joe O’Connor and his now-defunct company Community Parks Foundation
won a nearly $1-million contract with Huntington Beach by meeting one
simple qualification -- he applied for the job.
The Salem, Ore. contractor at the center of Sports Complex
controversy was the only person to submit an application to build
phase two of the project, which included batting cages, a soccer
arena and roller hockey rinks, retired Community Services Director
Ron Hagan said.
Hagan, who helped facilitate the project for the city, said
complicated financing requirements mandated that only a contractor
with nonprofit status be given the job.
“When we put out a request for proposal, Community Parks
Foundation was the only group that applied,” Hagan said Thursday at
his Corona del Mar home.
Community Parks Foundation, however, was not actually a registered
nonprofit, nor were the six other dissolved corporations that
O’Connor had listed on the Oregon Business Registry.
O’Connor’s qualifications are coming under increasing scrutiny as
Huntington Beach city attorneys try to determine the truth about the
self-proclaimed soccer visionary. The city is suing O’Connor, who
abandoned the sports complex project he was paid $950,000 to build.
The city may now have an opportunity to learn where their money
was spent. O’Connor is required to attend an Aug. 31 hearing in
Oregon to disclose his assets after two years on the lam from a
soccer club owner in Kalamazoo, Mich.
Chris Keenan hired O’Connor to build a pavilion, but said he
became worried when O’Connor stopped returning his phone calls and
failed to pay his subcontractors. O’Connor went back to Oregon, and
Keenan filed a lawsuit, first in Michigan, and then again in Oregon,
where he eventually secured a felony warrant for the contractor’s
arrest. O’Connor, who once worked as an attorney, never showed up for
any of his hearings.
The Marion County Sheriff’s Department reported O’Connor turned
himself in on Aug 6. but now say that he was actually arrested by
police at his home. Deputy Kevin Rau said he misread a computer
report on O’Connor’s detainment.
But before Surf City can recover any of its money, it will have to
wait behind Keenan, who says that O’Connor owes him $800,000 on the
botched Kalamazoo deal. Ironically, Huntington Beach was expecting to
save money by hiring O’Connor.
By bringing a tax-exempt contractor on the job, Hagan said the
city hoped to lock in special financing with just 4% interest.
“Not having a nonprofit would have jeopardized the project and
gotten it financed at 7% or 8%,” he said.
O’Connor presented the project as a testing ground for his indoor
pavilion idea and brought on several other vendors who would work on
the project to boost their name recognition. He told Hagan that he
had worked on several pavilions in Mexico and Ireland, but never to
the scale of what was planned for Huntington Beach.
“They didn’t have a track record, but they had a good proposal and
it sounded good,” Hagan said.
O’Connor never told Hagan about the fiasco in Kalamazoo or two
other disastrous projects in the late 90’s in Salem and Yakima,
Wash., both of which were plagued with regulatory and financial
difficulties. The Salem project, known as the Sundome Soccer
Pavilion, eventually fell over in a windstorm.
City officials are also looking into the process used to award
bids to ensure contractors are checked out thoroughly, Assistant City
Administrator Bill Workman said. He plans to meeting with Community
Services Director Jim Engle to discuss problems and consider
implementing mandatory background checks and pre-employment
screenings, he said.
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