81°
“This is hearsay, rumor, innuendo. This is just part of the whole attempt to try to intimidate the commission,” Dougherty said.
City officials, Sachs, and Portman have maintained that neither team saw the other’s revised financial projections until after Portman’s July 8 submission.
Still, the city on Wednesday decided to toss Portman’s later submission.
Tishman’s letter also calls it “highly suspicious” that Miami Beach asked both teams to sign agreements not to sue the city before it became public that Portman had submitted a follow-up financial proposal past the city’s deadline.
He added the team was given a short deadline to sign the agreement not to sue, which didn’t give their lawyers a chance to rework the agreement with city attorneys. Al Dotson Jr., an attorney for ACE, has said the agreement as proposed by the city is overly broad and may be illegal.
“Unfortunately, this lack of preparation time on the city’s part created a significant problem for us. You were left with the impression that we were being difficult, when actually we have done our due diligence and were being mindful of the law,” Tishman wrote.
In an email to the Miami Herald sent Thursday, the ACE team said it wants Miami Beach to, among other things: “investigate how and why Portman-CMC’s July 8 submission came to be remarkably similar to our July 5 submission, including why their rent would change on the retail north of 17th Street, which had nothing to do with the ‘misunderstanding’ purported by Portman-CMC; and acknowledge publicly that the City Consultant should not have solicited Portman-CMC’s July 8th memo to begin with.”
Miami Beach’s city manager, city attorney and mayor did not respond to requests for comment Thursday night.
Follow @Cveiga on Twitter.
RSS
My Yahoo