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By David Pendered

Atlanta’s eight-month effort to sign concessions contracts at the airport evidently collapsed over paperwork problems in just a few significant portions of the process.

The troubled areas appear to involve three packages of concessions space: 25 food and beverage spaces in Concourse A, dominated by Delta Air Lines; 28 retail spaces in the future international concourse; and 12 food and beverage spaces reserved for small-scale, Mom and Pop establishments such as Manuel’s Tavern.

The city took from five to six weeks to determine that it would exercise its most extreme response possible to proposals that Atlanta COO Peter Aman said were non-responsive. The city could have rejected just portions of some or all proposals, according to the city’s Request for Proposals.

By David Pendered

Atlanta’s announcement that it has decided to cancel the procurement process for all food and beverage concessions at the airport, and start over, left a host of questions and dearth of answers over the Labor Day weekend.

Atlanta’s COO, Peter Aman, said the eight corporations competing for contracts were notified of the cancellation Friday, Sept. 2, at 3 p.m.

The city’s decision upended the corporations’ proposals for 125 food and beverage locations, and 23 for retail, that are to extend up to 13 years. Concessions revenues are said to exceed $336 million a year.

A few questions include:

This story has been updated.

By David Pendered

Atlanta has cancelled the procurement process for all of the 152 food and beverage concessions pending at the airport and will issue new requests for proposals next week, the city’s COO said Friday.

The city took the drastic action because 36 percent of the 95 proposals vendors had presented to the city were fatally flawed, said COO Peter Aman.

The flaw was a failure to submit a properly completed form – one required by state law – confirming that all workers have legal permission to work in the United States, Aman said.

The delay in the contracting process will not mar the opening of the new international concourse, Aman said. All means necessary will be undertaken to ensure that the concourse will open in Spring 2012 with all the planned places for passengers to eat and drink.

By David Pendered

The proposal to build roads and transit in metro Atlanta with a 1 percent sales tax got a boost Wednesday from four unlikely parties.

The four – President Obama, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, AFL-CIO, and chairman of the House Transportation Committee – indicated that each wants Congress and the White House to reach a deal over the continuation of the federal highway bill. It expires Sept. 30.

Metro Atlanta desperately needs some of that federal road and transit money. It’s programmed into some projects that will be promised if voters in 2012 approve a proposed 1 percent sales tax for transportation. The sales tax referendum now is scheduled for the July ballot.

By David Pendered

It was only a matter of time until the competition for food and beverage concessions at Atlanta’s airport heated up with an Internet marketing campaign aimed directly at airline passengers.

A prime vendor has launched a multi-media website that – for the first time in Atlanta – seems intended to bring passengers into the battle. The website’s goal appears to be for informed consumers to urge city officials to bring the chefs and restaurant concepts in OTG’s bid to the airport, said Ken Bernhardt, a marketing professor in the Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University.

By David Pendered

The Atlanta Beltline is adding a half-acre of land to the city’s first BeltLine park, just as Atlanta prepares for the grand opening in September of two ball fields at the future green space.

The additional land at the Boulevard Crossing Park, located south of Grant Park, will improve access to a site that now covers about 21.2 acres purchased by the city in 2007.

The current acquisition is occurring as the city has secured an earmark for $600 million for the Beltline in the event that voters next year approve a 1 percent sales tax to raise $6.14 billion for transportation improvements.

By David Pendered

Life is returning to normal at the Uncle Remus Museum in Eatonton, where the theft of a statue of Brer Rabbit stunned the community and where the restored statue has been replaced.

“We have some people waiting to come in,” museum hostess Millie Lane said Saturday morning. “Let me go help them and then I can talk.”

The Brer Rabbit statue is back on its pedestal in front of the museum in the town where Joel Chandler Harris was born and reared before moving to Atlanta to become a writer after the American Civil War. Harris lived in the Wren’s Nest home, in West End.