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Originally Posted by Stay Golden
The cost of the bridge is one thing which according to polls 98% of Calgarians agree 25m was wasted and the bridge was not even needed.
The location was extremely poor. This was not a placement that made any logic what so ever.
The thing that bothered me the most was how this project was closed off to ALL outside and local contractors. There was no open tendor that cityhall allowed any other engineering companies to bid on.
From what I know from dealing with Graham, PCL, Devitt, SNC, Aecon etc that projects of this magnitude are always tendered.
Bronco and Dru Farrell keeping this as a exclusive contract to Calatrava should have been shut down from the start.
Very unscrupulous practice right from the beginning and was forced on the city.
It was the unethical management by City Hall on this project that I feel should have shut this down. Not the cosmetics of the bridge or cost that is an entirely seperate issue to itself.
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Disagree. I'm in the industry, and even I'm happy this one was sole-sourced. The City went out and actually got a bridge designer worthy of putting a bridge there.
I deal with City RFP's every day, and this was, in a way, a refreshing breath of air. Had we gone through the RFP process on this, it would have been a waste of taxpayers dollars and private company resources. They wanted Calatrava, and they didn't bullcrap about it. They should have fessed up to it from the beginning about him, I agree there... but the end product is something we should all be happy about.
I'm incredibly proud we didn't go for the lowest bidder. Leave that practice to the towns and villages of the world. This is a signature bridge in a signature location. It has to be world-class - unlike the ugly-ass pedestrian bridge to the east of it.
Besides, we all had our chance on the St. Patrick's Island Bridge at the exact same time, which gets forgotten all too often.