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Thursday, November 19, 2009

JBG Suit Blocking Convention Hotel Survives Motion to Dismiss

The Washington Business Journal reports that the judge denied the City's motion to dismiss the lawsuit. JBG's case challenges the contracting process, which JBG asserts was an “invalid sole source procurement.” With the lawsuit moving forward, it seems unlikely that the hotel will break ground this year or that the hotel will be complete in 2013.

4 comments:

FourthandEye said...

What is JBG really hoping to gain here? They'll probably delay the project 2-3 years just to earn the right to be part of a new RFP. After burning their bridges with the city over this do we think they'd actually win a new RFP for a convention center hotel - or for any other future DMPED project in the district for that matter?

Very curious play by a company that does almost all it's work in the DC area. I might have understood if a national developer that lost out on the original bidding for such a project would make this power play. But I'm not understanding what JBG has to gain here...

Anonymous said...

I don't like the scenario JBG has undertaken-- but I don't see how they could be black balled in the future for this in an open RFP process. If DC were to become dismissive of future bids by JBG I would see future lawsuits that would also have merit.

Anonymous said...

Word on the street is that this lawsuit really has nothing to do with the Convention Center Hotel and is instead a power play with regard to a completely different property in DC. JBG is looking for a deal...

FourthandEye said...

>> I don't like the scenario JBG has undertaken-- but I don't see how they could be black balled in the future for this in an open RFP process.

The RFP process is complex and has an element of subjectivity. Who can say that project X is unequivocally better than project Y? I'd imagine being a difficult firm to deal with has potential to influence the decision making process in a less than overt way...