News

By Willie Howard

    West Construction, the company that sued the Boynton Beach Community Redevelopment Agency over the contract for the new Harbor Master building under construction at Boynton Harbor Marina, will not seek an injunction that could have stopped the work on the marina renovation project.
    Following a May 5 court hearing, West attorney Bruce Loren said the company will continue the lawsuit in hopes of preventing the Boynton Beach CRA from using the same bid criteria that excluded the Lake Worth-based construction company from winning the Harbor Master job.
    The CRA awarded the $1.6 million Harbor Master project to Lake Mary-based Collage Design and Construction Group. Collage was the second-lowest bidder, behind West.
    West sued the CRA in March, just after Collage began work on the project near the marina’s fuel docks, which will include new restrooms, a ship’s store, new fuel pumps and landscaped open space.
    West’s lawsuit claimed that the CRA’s stipulations in the invitation to bid — including a requirement that the bidders had not been a party to litigation or arbitration arising from a public project within the past two years — violate Florida law and are “arbitrary, capricious, vague, indefinite, uncertain, unclear and exclusionary.”
    During a May 5 hearing in Palm Beach County Circuit Court, Judge Thomas Barkdull denied the CRA’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
    The Harbor Master building and surrounding improvements are scheduled to be completed in January.