Back in September, 2012 I blogged about a couple property management contracts the City of Winnipeg had with local real estate firm Shindico.

According to a Freedom of Information response I had received from the city, Shindico was hired for property management work at the old Dominion Bridge property and the old Canada Post buildings on Graham. The city claimed Shindico was selected as they had the best bid in a 2010 RFP put out by the city for real estate services.

However, several industry participants told me the 2010 RFP was for selling properties, not for property management work so firms didn’t provide bids for what they charged for the latter.

Thus, the firms didn’t agree with the city selecting a firm to do property management work just because it charged the city the best rate for selling properties.

That would be like buying all your shampoo at Wal-Mart because they had the best prices on a brand of toothpaste you like – they’re two totally different products.

One thing led to another and Brian Kelcey, founder of State of the City Research, and I presented our concerns with this process at the October 2012 Property and Development Committee meeting.

Councillors Wyatt and Browaty agreed with our concerns and voted to cancel the property management contracts at the next meeting; on November 6, 2012.

However, the motion they passed called for giving Shindico a 90-day notice of the termination of the contract. Without checking my calendar and counting the days, I’m guessing that agreement would have expired around February 6. The council committee also directed the city’s administration to issue a new RFP for the work right away – so that all firms, Shindico included, could bid for the work.

An RFP was issued shortly after and closed on February 8, 2013. However, as of September 8, 2013 (seven months later) the city has yet to award a firm the contract.

While it’s surprising that a fairly simple tender can close and the city hasn’t awarded the contract seven months later, what’s more surprising was something I learned in a recent email exchange with the city. According to staff, Shindico’s property management work didn’t wrap up around February 6; they were given an extension until June 30 – eight months after the Property and Development committee voted to cancel their contract.

This leaves me with a few questions I can’t figure out…

1) Who provided the extension to Shindico? I can’t seem to find any evidence that a council committee approved the extension until June 30. Did staff override a council committee decision?

2) Why hasn’t the city selected a firm for the RFP on property management yet? It closed on February 8, 2013.

3) Is it common for a property management firm to receive a commission for signing tenants on top of their commission for managing the property? (I didn’t mention this above, but Shindico seems set to receive a small commission for landing Starbucks as a tenant in the Graham property.) Is this item still going to council as the report suggests?

4) The commission for Shindico and Avison Young (the agent for the company negotiating the lease for the Starbucks franchise owner) on the Starbucks lease doesn’t seem to be listed as an expense. Is that common?

5) Is there a commission on renewing the lease agreement with Canada Post in their new building? If so, how much is it and who receives it?

6) The November 6 Property and Development meeting called for staff to report back at the “February 12, 2013” meeting on the matter of Dominion Bridge. There was no February 12 meeting – there was a February 19 meeting but I can’t see anything in the minutes about a report back…did that happen?

.