DeKalb school exec Pope gave architecture firms the ax

The DeKalb County School System paid $660,000 to those architects for work that it later paid others to do, according to the financial data and contracts of those involved.

For its work on both projects, the company owned by Pat Pope’s estranged husband, Tucker architect Anthony “Tony” Pope, will earn at least $1.23 million.

When reached by phone recently, Pat Pope declined to comment. Tony Pope could not be reached for comment.

But Pat Pope’s attorney, Manny Arora, said in an e-mail that she did not change the projects to benefit her husband.

“The decisions she has made have benefited the citizens and students of Dekalb County,” he wrote. “The projects she has worked on have finished under budget and on time. Her actions are based on 30 years of experience and have always been in compliance with Georgia law.”

The projects are two of the eight that are under criminal investigation by the DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office.

The revelation about the changes to the projects is the latest in a series of AJC articles about Pat Pope’s actions related to the construction projects under criminal investigation.

The newspaper has previously reported that Tony Pope’s involvement on the McNair project — he was hired as a subcontractor by the company hired to build the school — was unknown to the school district until a whistleblower reported it, former DeKalb school Superintendent Crawford Lewis told authorities in 2008.

The AJC also reported on another change Pat Pope made to the Mountain Industrial project. When the project was resurrected in 2007, she broke it into two phases without advertising the change. That made it possible for Tony Pope to work on the project.

None of that would have been possible, however, if Pat Pope had stuck with the original architects.

Authorities are investigating whether Pat Pope, who has been removed from her position as chief operating officer and reassigned, broke the law by allegedly steering contracts to her husband’s architectural firm and other construction companies where she has connections. Investigators refuse to discuss the case.

When Pope was hired by the school system in October 2005, she and Tony Pope were told that he could not get any more work from the school system due to the conflict of interest, Lewis has said.

Tony Pope contends that an April 2008 letter written by then-school district attorney J. Stanley Hawkins later cleared the way for him to work as a subcontractor on school district projects.

In the letter, Hawkins noted that he didn’t consider such an arrangement to be a conflict of interest but left the ultimate decision up to the school board. It’s unclear whether the board resolved the matter.

The letter was written after Tony Pope worked as a subcontractor on the McNair project and a month before he got hired as a sub for the Mountain Industrial project.

Pat Pope terminated the architects who were designing McNair and Mountain Industrial just three months after she was hired, in January 2006.

The design firms — Brown Design Group and Smallwood, Reynolds, Stewart, Stewart & Associates — had contracts that allowed the school system to terminate their contracts for any reason.

The school district told one company that it had decided to build a non-traditional school; it told the other that the change was prompted by budget problems.

When the projects were reborn, Pope changed them both in a way that allowed the construction companies to hire their own architects. That gave Tony Pope an opportunity to work on the projects without reporting to the school district.

Arora said Pat Pope’s actions had nothing to do with her husband. He said Pope altered the construction projects “to avoid losing the state funding associated with both projects.”

McNair was in danger of losing the $4.7 million in state funds that the school district received for the project.

However, the other one, Mountain Industrial, did not get any state funding.

“They never asked for money from us,” Lynn Jackson, the state Department of Education official who oversees such projects, said of Mountain Industrial.

Brown Design’s president, Audra Cooper, said her company took the decision in stride, as she had previously dealt with school systems that changed course on projects.

Officials from Smallwood declined to comment.

The AJC obtained documents from both companies through Open Records Act requests on the grounds that the firms received public money for the projects.

For the Mountain Industrial project, Pope informed Smallwood that the project was being halted “due to budgetary issues,” according to a letter Pope wrote to the company dated Jan. 12, 2006.

The project was, in fact, plagued with budget problems, as those involved struggled to keep it below the initial $10 million construction budget, documents show.

But after the project was reborn in 2007, the budget ballooned far past its original number, reaching $25 million.

On the McNair project, Arora said Pope terminated Brown Design’s contract because the company “could not design the project within the budget set for McNair.”

But officials with Brown Design say that is news to them.

“I’ve never heard of that,” Brown Design founder and CEO Tarlee Brown said. “I don’t know where that came from.”

A letter Superintendent Lewis wrote to the company in 2006 says only that the district was terminating the contract because it decided to make changes to the school.

“At some point, someone decided that it was going to be a special school — not a typical one,” Cooper said.

But that never happened. McNair was built as a traditional elementary school, following the same general specifications given to Brown Design.

For Brown Design’s work, the school district paid the company $169,520 of its $627,000 contract.

Smallwood earned $901,392 for its work on Mountain Industrial — $499,000 of which was for work that was later redone by Tony Pope, according to a review of contracts related to the project.

Tony Pope was able to work on the two projects because Pat Pope turned them into “design-build” projects, in which one contractor was hired to both design and build the schools. The companies hired to build the schools subcontracted out the design work to architects.

Pope’s attorney, Arora, said Pope changed the projects because the school system had to have a contractor hired by April 30 “to avoid losing the state funding.”

Mountain Industrial involved no state funds, but Jackson, the state official who reviewed the project, confirmed that she did impose the April 30, 2006, deadline for the school district to hire a company to build McNair.

Nix-Fowler Constructors, based in Mableton, won the bulk of the Mountain Industrial project, which should be complete this spring. Its contract has grown to $21.3 million.

Lithonia-based C.D. Moody Construction won the McNair project, which is complete and earned the company $12.3 million.

Nix-Fowler co-founder Carey Fowler has said the company was not aware of any issues that would prevent Tony Pope from working on school district projects. C.D. Moody’s owner, David Moody, who is a friend of Pat and Tony Pope, has declined to comment.

Nix-Fowler does not appear to be involved in the investigation. C.D. Moody has been identified by the District Attorney’s Office as one of the companies to which Pat Pope might have steered contracts.

Both Nix-Fowler and Moody ended up hiring Tony Pope to work on their projects.

Nix-Fowler will pay him over $1 million by the time the project is done, records show.

For the McNair project, Moody hired architect Vernell Barnes to be the primary architect. But, unbeknownst to the school system, Moody hired Tony Pope to work as a consulting architect, Lewis has said.

Records show that the two architects should have made at least $340,000 combined — about $160,000 for Tony Pope.

Unlike Mountain Industrial, which lay dormant for more than a year and a half, Pat Pope immediately resurrected the McNair project after firing Brown Design.

The school district re-advertised the project three weeks later.

By the time Moody signed the contract to build the school in April 2006, contrary to what it told Brown Design months earlier, the school district still had not decided whether it would turn McNair into a non-traditional school.

In fact, it gave Moody an additional $15,000 to do a study to determine what the school should become, documents show.

In the end, the school district decided that McNair would be a traditional school, meaning that Brown Design lost out on more than $450,000 for a reason that never became reality.

And some of that money ended up with Tony Pope’s company.

A tale of two projects

DeKalb County school official Patricia “Pat” Pope dismissed two architecture firms working on different multimillion-dollar school construction projects and altered them in a way that made it possible for her architect husband to work on them. The following timelines take a look at the way events unfolded with the two school projects.

McNair

May 20, 2003 —The school district signs a $627,000 contract with architectural firm Brown Design Group to design a traditional school then identified as McNair Cluster Elementary School.

Dec. 14, 2005 — Pat Pope orders architectural firm Brown Design to stop working on the McNair project.

Jan. 17, 2006 —The school district informs Brown Design that it is terminating the contract, saying it is making changes to the school.

Feb. 3, 2006—The school district re-advertises for the McNair project.

April 25, 2006—C.D. Moody Construction Company signs $11.9 million contract to design and build the McNair school, now named Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy. Moody hired architect Tony Pope to work on the project.

Nov. 16, 2006 —School district authorizes paying an additional $15,000 to C.D. Moody to do a study about whether McNair should be a traditional or non-traditional school. The district eventually decides to build a traditional school.

Mountain Industrial Center

May 14, 2003 —The school district hires architectural firm Smallwood, Reynolds, Stewart, Stewart & Associates for the first phase of the Mountain Industrial Center project.

June 25, 2004 —Smallwood signs $735,000 contract to design the rest of the facility.

Jan. 12, 2006 —The school district informs Smallwood that it is terminating the contract, citing budgetary issues.

Sept. 6, 2007 —The school district begins advertising the Mountain Industrial Center project, which was broken up into two phases.

Jan. 12, 2008 —The first, and much smaller, phase is awarded to Hogan Construction Group.

Feb. 14, 2008 —The remaining portion of the project is advertised.

May 11, 2008 —The district signs a contract, now worth $21.3 million, with Nix-Fowler Constructors to design and build the rest of the project. Nix-Fowler hires Tony Pope to be its architect.