County to begin terminating architect’s contract for Centreville courts project

By Robert Tomlinson
News Director

CENTREVILLE — TowerPinkster will soon no longer be the architect of record for an ongoing multi-million-dollar renovation project with the courts building in Centreville.
In a narrow 4-3 vote at Tuesday’s St. Joseph County Board of Commissioners meeting, commissioners voted to have County Administrator Teresa Cupp begin negotiating a termination of the county’s contract with TowerPinkster for architectural services on the $7.7 million courts building renovation.
The move means that the county will negotiate an exit with TowerPinkster, re-bid the architectural services, and start near toward the beginning stages of planning the renovation of the building with a new architectural firm, which has the potential of delaying the project.
Third District Commissioner Rusty Baker, Seventh District Commissioner Terry Conklin, First District Commissioner Jared Hoffmaster and Sixth District Commissioner Ken Malone voted in favor of terminating the contract, while Third District Commissioner Dennis Allen, Fourth District Commissioner Luis Rosado and Second District Commissioner Rick Shaffer dissented.
The move comes amid concerns commissioners had about delays by the firm in the planning process, as well as apparent communication issues between TowerPinkster, the county’s owner representative The Barton Group, ABM, and the county itself.
TowerPinkster Architect Shawn Parshall and TowerPinkster President and CEO Bjorn Green were on hand at Tuesday’s meeting to make their case to the commissioners to stay with them.
Parshall went through the timeline of events regarding the issues at hand, starting with early discussions with stakeholders about which level of the courthouse District Court should be in. Those conversations, he said, “took a little bit of time,” due to what Jen Sawyer of the Barton Group told commissioners at last week’s Executive Committee meeting were “disagreements” with District Court and Circuit Court about layouts.
Following that, Parshall said there were issues surrounding getting information about the county’s energy performance contract and the building’s mechanicals with facility services company ABM. He said he had requested information from ABM in writing in mid-November, but after multiple attempts to contact ABM, they got in contact with them two weeks ago, receiving the contract for the first time, and said last week was the first time they’ve been given direction that ABM was willing to negate any part of the agreement specifically for the courts building to help facilitate work.
“I know there was a lot of work done by The Barton Group, by the county, trying to locate what that information was,” Parshall said. “Our intent in that was not to hold up the process at all; our intent was to understand what the details of that were so that we could move forward with a degree of certainty and the county could move forward with a degree of certainty that you weren’t negating any sort of agreement that was in place.”
Parshall added that the company was relying on The Barton Group for information, as they had been the “first point of contact” with the county regarding the project.
Baker then expressed much the same frustration and anger at ABM that he had during last week’s Executive Committee meeting, ripping into Parshall about an apparent lack of communication by TowerPinkster with anyone in a three-week period late in 2023.
“For three weeks straight, you didn’t answer a damn phone call. Not one,” Baker said. “I don’t know about anyone else in this room, but if you had a contractor and they didn’t contact you for three weeks, you’d be looking for someone else. It’s ridiculous. I’ve heard excuse, excuse, excuse, I haven’t heard one word out of you guys that, ‘we’re sorry we missed your deadline and we put you on the backburner.’ Not one. All I’ve heard is, ‘it’s Barton Group’s problem,’ ‘it’s their problem,’ ‘their problem,’ you guys don’t communicate. You flat don’t communicate. I have a timeline of non-communication. The one thing you were really good at communicating with was the bill.”
Parshall explained that the timeline Baker had “doesn’t include other conversations that were had,” which caused Baker to briefly interrupt before other commissioners allowed Parshall to continue, saying that he had sat in on a meeting for another project with The Barton Group “just after the new year,” and talked about the “challenges of not having electrical and mechanical information” from ABM.
Now that they had the information, Parshall said the company would be able to get design development documents by March 8, turn them over to Frederick Construction, give them three weeks, then take a week to review the estimate, then another four weeks for construction documents by April 8. He said bids would’ve gone out around May 3.
Rosado asked how the final deadlines would be affected if they terminated the contract with TowerPinkster, with Malone saying his understanding was it wouldn’t make a difference due to “missing the window” for summer construction already because of the delays.
So far, the county has paid $86,000 of a total $140,000 toward the architecture work on the project, and Malone said the county would have to talk about how much more they would have to pay, if anything, if they go into termination negotiations. He also said the county would be “farther down the road than square one” if they fire TowerPinkster.
“We had heard a lot of things along the way, we’ve retained information as we’ve discussed in the executive meeting,” Malone said. “We wouldn’t be backsliding at all; yeah, we’ll have a couple months of communication time between staff and a new designer to make sure they understand the flow of the courts building.”
Allen recalled what was said by Cupp, Sawyer and others at the Executive Committee meeting, that they believed it was not a good idea to terminate the contract and move on from TowerPinkster in the middle of the project.
“Are we going to rely on the people we hired, and listen to their advice?” Allen said. “Obviously, we haven’t been happy and have been frustrated with the setbacks, but to go against that advice, pay these folks up to $160,000, and then start over? … I know it began when we got into a meeting when we found out fm Jennifer that she’s having difficulty getting information from yourselves, and you’re not able to get us the info because you can’t get any information from ABM. It’s been a conglomeration of everybody.”
Allen then used an analogy to make his case to stay with ABM, given the circumstances.
“If it was my $160,000 and I hired a contractor to build my house, and I had to wait an extra two or three weeks to get these plans and drawings, and they provided assurances on this new timeline, I sure wouldn’t throw that money out the window and say, ‘no, sorry, you missed your deadline by three weeks, now I’m going to start over.’ You wouldn’t do it, I wouldn’t do it,” Allen said.
Hoffmaster said he wants this situation to be a “line in the sand” for the future, comparing the Centreville project with the project in Three Rivers that is currently ongoing and how “smoothly” it is going.
“I’m not looking at punishing anybody, but I, like everyone else, is sitting up here thinking, ‘okay, what’s the most effective use of taxpayer money,’ and the service that is being provided,” Hoffmaster said. “Right now, we’re in a significant delay because of the construction schedule, and that’s costing our taxpayers money. It feels like the longer this continues, the worse it gets.”
Hoffmaster added that Allen’s insinuation of throwing the money away wasn’t “necessarily the right term,” rather it would give the county “work product” to go with someone else and use to move forward, referencing any designs made by TowerPinkster as part of the contract.
Green, the TowerPinkster president/CEO, pushed back on that “work product” statement, saying that having another architecture firm take work product from another company could open the new company up to a lawsuit, and in essence would force them to start over with the designs and information gathering.
“You may know architects and engineers and have friends that are in other businesses, they will not just take our drawings and start because they take on all of the liability to then be sued for it,” Green said. “So, they will start over, maybe not from square one, they might not charge the same amount of money, no idea. But they will not take on that liability. That’s a professional liability risk they cannot take, their insurance carriers won’t allow them to take that on, and so they’ll start over.”
Green also apologized for the communication issues from the company that caused the possible termination decision in the first place.
“I apologize if there was three weeks of miscommunication, again, our reputation, that’s not how we work. We’re sorry that that happened, and we’re here to make amends and move this thing forward,” Green said.
Later, Parshall also took responsibility for communication issues.
“In all honesty, communication starts with me, and I was not great at it,” Parshall said. “There were no updates to give other than we’ve done everything else that we can keep moving forward at that point in time. We don’t have mechanical and electrical information to be able to inform those solutions, and it’s been that way for months. I’m not pointing that finger at anybody, it’s just a fact of the matter. So, when it came to updates, there wasn’t an update beyond, we’re still waiting for that information.”
Green gave the county reassurances that they would adhere to the new schedule Parshall mentioned earlier in the meeting, and also committed to give the county weekly updates on the progress of the planning for the project.
Shaffer said that while he was “about as passionate” as Baker about the situation, he also warned about possible legal costs of terminating the contract.
“Some of the concerns about delayed costs, if we were to terminate, there would be significant legal costs involved too, which would undoubtedly delay the project as well,” Shaffer said.
Rosado used another analogy in his reasoning for voting against the motion to terminate, saying that if you have a ship going off course, “you take corrective action to get back on course.”
“We’re better off saying, ‘Yes, you screwed up, we’re angry, let’s get this straightened out and have weekly communication and move forward so the money isn’t just gone,’” Rosado said.
Malone said he appreciated Green acknowledging TowerPinkster’s failures in the situation, but said at the end of the day, it came down to what would serve the community.
“I’m upset with a lot of things with this, the fact being is we want to bring home a project that is going to serve the community,” Malone said.
In commissioner comments following the vote, Baker applauded the result.
“It comes back to the no communication. At any point in time, they could call us up and discuss this,” Baker said. “The ball’s been dropped in a lot of places, including right here. It’s time this stops.”
In other business…

• Commissioners approved the proposal language for the road commission’s millage renewal request, which will be on the August ballot.
• Commissioners approved a resolution to seek the Michigan Department of Natural Resources’ help with implementing a Canada Goose nest destruction program for a five-year period on behalf of county residents.
  Robert Tomlinson can be reached at 279-7488 or robert@acnccrtest.c1.biz.