Seth Hurwitz, who owns the District’s 9:30 Club, has drafted his own nonbinding proposal for Silver Spring’s future music venue. But MoCo exec Ike Leggett (D) says the Colesville Road concert hall is already spoken for.
“Montgomery County has negotiated a letter of intent with Live Nation and will not negotiate with other parties,” Leggett wrote in a Nov 6 letter to Hurwitz.
“It would be inappropriate for the county to enter into an agreement with one operator only to subsequently decide to engage in simultaneous negotiations with a second proposed operator,” Leggett added. “This would be unacceptable.”
Leggett’s comments came in response to a Nov 5 proposal from Hurwitz, who outlined blow for blow how his company would help build and then lease the county-owned venue planned for the former JC Penney site.
Hurwitz’s pitch called for a three-story venue with a maximum 1,400 head count. His company would throw in $2 million to cover construction costs, plus the cost of rigging the venue’s interior with furniture, lighting and sound equipment. He would also like a full kitchen built, though it’s unclear from the proposition who would pay for those costs.
According to Hurwitz, his company’s proposal would offer “a superior musical experience for Montgomery County at far less cost to the county and the state.”
“The county can only derive benefit from a process that energetically pursues competing proposals for the right to operate this important venue,” Hurwitz added.
By contrast, Live Nation has proposed a maximum capacity of 2,000 people. The company isn’t contributing to the building’s construction, but it is covering the costs of interior fixings. Live Nation’s concert venue won’t have a full kitchen.
Both Live Nation and Hurwitz’s company have said they would open the venue’s doors to public and private functions, a sticking point during the county’s negotiations with The Birchmere. Those talks collapsed over the summer.
But the day before Live Nation inked its nonbinding agreement with the county in August, Hurwitz made his first pitch for the concert hall. At the time, Leggett said Hurwitz’s overtures came too late for consideration.
MoCo’s chief administrative officer Tim Firestine told Hurwitz the same thing when they met in October, according to Leggett.
Updated Nov 7, 2007, at 11:50 a.m.
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So all of a sudden Leggett is unwilling to consider a better offer because he’s already in tentative agreement with Live Nation? Gee, what about the tentative agreement with the Birchmere?
Jennifer, as soon as your various spies and moles and minions discover which Democrat plans to run against Leggett, please let us know so that I can send him or her a campaign contribution.
Needless to say, I would be 100% for this. And Leggett is being disingenuous–but c’mon Seth, where were you a few months ago?!
I am with Springvale here. I voted for Ike Leggett and I am already having regrets. The county’s reputation in the business community will take a serious blow if the LiveNation deal is abrogated.
I don’t like Ike right now.
“But the day before Live Nation inked its deal with the county in August, Hurwitz made his first pitch for the concert hall. At the time, Leggett said Hurwitz’s overtures came too late for consideration.”
Jennifer, the ‘inked deal’ is not a done “deal.” It’s a non-binding letter of intent. Either party can walk away from the negotiations without penalty. Letters of Intent are a framework for negotiations before a legally binding deal is signed.
Editor’s note: Point taken, Roger. I’ll amend the article to reflect that. Thanks! — JD (Nov 7, 2007)
What it looks like to me is that Hurwitz wants to have an equal chance to operate the venue as the Birchmere did. The fact that Hurwitz submitted the letter the day before “Live Nation inked its deal with the county” is important. He was reaching out to the county to be considered. Leggett rebuffed him then and now he’s presenting a better deal for the county and Leggett is rebuffing him again.
I disagree with ‘IHateYuppies’ about business community’s reputation. It will show that Silver Spring wants to nurture local businesses not multinational corporations. This is very important to the economic vitality of downtown Silver Spring.
Put the politics aside, Leggett wants to do the best for Silver Spring and we all know that Hurwitz offer is better. We just need to make sure Leggett knows this!
Birchmere…Live Nation…9:30…… Enough of this roller coaster ride. Let’s get this Live Nation deal done ASAP!! Seth Hurwitz should have made a pitch earlier to bring a music venue to DTSS. I do not believe that having a second 9:30 club in DTSS is good for competition. Will the DTSS venue get the second rate acts while the first rate acts go to the 9:30 club in the District? Let’s bring in Live Nation and let them compete with the 9:30 club for acts. If Seth Hurwitz wants to bring a music venue to DTSS why doesn’t he look into bringing a smaller venue to DTSS that caters to up-and-coming acts? I think somewhere along the Georgia Ave. strip just south of Bonifant might be a good area to have this type of music venue.
I think somewhere along the Georgia Ave. strip just south of Bonifant might be a good area to have this type of music venue.?
Would Hurwitz get $8 million in subsidies for that property? No!
The roller coaster ride would have been prevented if there would have been a request for proposals for the site. Thats how development should work. The deal should NOT be finished ASAP because the Live Nation deal is a bad deal for DTSS and the county.
Didn’t MoCo have an agreement with Birchmere and then blew them off for Live Nation? Whats the difference here? Something shady is in the works.
My thoughts exactly, Adam – this just makes everyone think someone is taking a “kick-back” or under-the-table payments of some kind — Leggett needs to make this whole process more transparent and give us the real facts.
From everything I heard, Hurwitz didn’t put anything forward earlier because he didn’t want to intrude on pending birchmere negotiations – which all reports said were still ongoing.
This is why smaller businesses don’t get a chance, because while the county is flat out lying and saying everything is going great, the big-boys are the only ones on the inside who know the truth. By the time the negotiations fell apart, Live Nation was on the inside and ready to step in.
Hurwitz shouldn’t have had to go to the county, they should have come to him. He’s an obviously better choice for our tax dollars, being a local business.
After the Birchmere deal fell through, maybe I missed it, but did the county even put out a formal RFP (Request for Proposals)?? Or were they already in bed with ClearChannel (let’s just call them what they are) long before the deal fell through? I’m guessing the second.
Well, I’ll agree with the consensus, but only to a point. 20/20 hindsight being what it is, it certainly looks now like a more formal bid process might have insulated Leggett from the “negotiation in newsprint” that’s currently being engaged by IMP. It also might have elicited other competitive bids, of which either LiveNation or IMP might, or might not have been the best.
Having said that, I don’t support the idea that negotiations with LiveNation be broken off _now_ in favor of a formal RFP process. To do so after publishing the Letter of Intent with LN effectively sets up a RFP process where one bidder (LiveNation) starts at a significant disadvantage: everyone else knows what their initial proposal was.
Commenters on this blog and others have noted that the IMP letter clearly points out how their new (also non-binding) proposal is better than LN’s. That’s only possible because the Letter of Intent was published, and IMP was able to pick out how they wanted to sweeten the deal. If the leasing rights to this new performance hall were being sold by auction, that might be OK, but in this case, it would seem to be less than good faith negotiation.
Don’t get me wrong, I think IMP could do a great job at the new performance hall (I suspect they’d try to fit a slightly older Demographic than the 9:30 Club, but not quite as far as the Birchmere), and I wish that two things would’ve happened: MoCo thought through how they wanted to find a new partner, and IMP getting off the stick earlier. Happily, IMP’s letters will keep negotiations brisk and honest between MoCo and LN (both know there’s a viable second option), so the letters ultimately serve a good purpose to the taxpayer, as long as the County resists temptation and avoids exposing itself to bad faith negotiation charges.
By the way, paul_silver_spring, I’m not sure how to read your “big boys are the only ones who know the truth” statement. There were fully two months between public announcements of the end of Birchmere negotiations and the signed Letter of Intent, more than enough time for IMP to get in touch with the county. I believe Hurwitz has agreed that waiting so long was a mistake. I don’t mean that as a personal swipe (and I agree with you on the RFP idea), but I don’t agree with the thought that this somehow was an inside job…just one where all “bids” weren’t proposed before an agreement was reached.