A Fulton County Superior Court judge Tuesday ordered the city of Atlanta to provide more information to unsuccessful bidders for potentially lucrative contracts to run shops and restaurants at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
The losing companies wanted to stop the city from officially awarding the contracts until they received more documents under Georgia's open records law. Those documents could serve as ammunition for formal protests. At stake are millions of dollars in potential sales for contracts slated to last a decade.
After hours of discussion, Judge Constance C. Russell issued an order requiring the city to deliver additional documents by Jan. 27, and then give companies 10 additional days to file protests. The city can continue to negotiate contracts with winning companies but cannot sign them without first going back to the plaintiffs and allowing them to come back to court, Russell said.
Without Russell's decision, Tuesday would have been the final day for companies that lost in competitions for restaurant or retail slots at the airport to file formal protests with the city.
Adam Smith, the city's chief procurement officer, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution earlier this month that he had already denied three protests. The city's code allows for companies whose appeals have been initially denied to appeal to a hearing officer.
The legislation authorizing the contracts -- which cover 150 restaurant, bar and retail locations throughout the airport's existing terminals and the international terminal set for completion in May -- was passed by the Atlanta City Council on Dec. 14 and signed by Mayor Kasim Reed two days later. The city is ironing out details of the contracts with winning proponents.
The establishments, including well-recognized Atlanta brands such as the Varsity and Willy's Mexicana Grill, are expected to churn out sales of about $347 million per year.
The city's attorneys raised the specter -- if the protesting companies got their way -- of an international terminal opening with empty storefronts or construction sites where restaurants should be.
"They are basing their requests for extraordinary relief on speculation," said Angela Payne James, a partner with Alston & Bird LLP who represented the city. "They are asking the city to step in and put the brakes on this process" of awarding contracts.
That would cost the city's Aviation Department $5.1 million in lost revenue per month, James said. She called that "very real harm."
But an attorney for one of the losing companies said his client, SSP, one of the world's largest airport concessions companies, lacked crucial information about the winning proposals, even after the city last week released 2 million pages of documents related to the airport's contracts.
Attorney Kenneth P. Hodges III said a wide range of information was redacted by some winning companies: business plans, executive summaries, past business dealings and locations for the new restaurants. That put his client in a Catch-22, he said.
"We can't file a meaningful protest, one with substance and evidence, without the evidence," Hodges told Russell. "I don't know what I don't know."
J. Matthew Maguire Jr., an attorney for Midfield Concession Enterprises and other companies that competed unsuccessfully for small restaurant slots, said the requests for more documents was reasonable.
"We're not talking about the formula for Coca-Cola," he said.
Channel 2 Action News reporter Richard Belcher contributed to this article.
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