In their second try at revamping restaurants and shops throughout the airport, Atlanta officials are trying to prevent the problems that arose during their first attempt at awarding the lucrative concessions contracts for Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
"This has been a challenging experience for us," city of Atlanta chief procurement officer Adam Smith said at a conference Tuesday for concessionaires interested in the contracts, "but we want to get it right."
The airport plans to open 126 new food and beverage outlets and 26 new retail outlets. An initial batch of proposals was tossed out because too many lacked required information and documents.
"This time around," Smith said, "if your form is incorrect, you're going to be deemed non-responsive," and disqualified.
In response to questions about whether politics played a role in the decision by the city to restart the process, Smith said, "We're not trying to give this to anybody in particular."
Some of the concessionaires say the city's decision to start over again is costly for them and takes up valuable time for the airport as it works toward opening the international terminal next spring.
"What if something else happens?" said Charisma Williams, who runs a design firm specializing in airport concessions. "To keep pushing it back, of course, only delays the opening of the [international] terminal."
Concessionaire William Swift, president of Business Traveler Services, which operates specialty retail outlets at airports, said it's "expensive and time-consuming" to redo proposals.
On Tuesday, city officials went into excruciating detail on the many forms that concessionaires must complete.
In the first concessions solicitation last spring, "it's clear that we didn't do a good job on the forms," said Hartsfield-Jackson's concessions director Paul Brown.
Some new concessionaire hopefuls came to the conference, raising the prospect that the second round of solicitations could attract even more competitors.
Most proposals for new restaurants and shops at the airport are now due in late October, and Brown said he hopes to make recommendations on contract awards in early December and to execute leases by January.
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