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The Legal Case for the Bridge

In 2001 the City of Little Rock published a Request For Proposal Bid No. 01-297 ("RFP") for those who might want to lease the newly acquired 28 acres east of the River Market. The land had been acquired for the Clinton Library but since the City could not simply give the land to a private foundation, it had to find another way to convey it. It could not simply lease it to the Foundation either, but had to make it appear to be a competitive opportunity, available to all, hence the RFP. The above procedure was required by various Arkansas Statutes: Ark. Code Ann. 14-269-103, 22-4-501, and 4-269-103.

The Foundation's Response to the City's RFP explicitly and unequivocally commits it to renovate the bridge, to do so as a part of the original construction and to pay all costs thereof in excess of the City's million dollars. Thus the Response required the Bridge renovation contemporaneously with the Library and required the Foundation to pay for all renovation expenses above $1 million. (All questions posed in the RFP are repeated and then answered in the Response, hence, the RFP is not reproduced here).

The Lease, however, may be inconsistent with the Response (and the RFP itself), because the Foundation now argues that the Lease gives the Foundation discretion on the timing of the construction, and does not even obligate it to pay all construction costs above the City's $1 million.

These aspects of the Lease were never made public. Certainly, the City never disclosed that the Lease was argued by the Foundation to have terms that do not conform to the requirements of the public bid process. The law requires the Lease terms to conform to the public bid requirements set forth in the RFP and the Foundation's Response to it, so there can be no viable argument by the Foundation that that Lease does not require contemporary construction and the Foundation's payment of all funds in excess of the City's $1 million. Further, if the Foundation wishes to argue this despite the public bid requirements, the City's proper response would seem to be that the Foundation cannot renege on the obligations it assumed in the Response to the RFP, which must have been carried forward into the Lease. Finally, if in fact the Lease varies from the RFP requirements and the Response to the RFP, then there would appear to be a serious legal question about the public bidding process and the legal status of the Lease.