HOUSTON -- A fight between bidders for a group of lucrative airport concession contracts came to an odd climax Wednesday. ouston City Council awarded the $1.6-billion deals to a group led by an old friend of Mayor Annise Parker.
Losing bidders bitterly complained that the process of selecting the winners was flawed and that the cozy relationships winning bidders struck with elected officials influenced the decision-making.
Among the new restaurants that will appear at Houston airports are Café Adobe, Hugo's and The Breakfast Klub. They're part of the group involved in the winning bid led by Cindy Clifford, a politically connected public relations person whose involvement in the deal became a lightning rod for negative publicity.
Just when it seemed the food fight at Houston City Hall couldn't get any zanier, a friend of the mayor who'd just won one of the juiciest city contracts of them all, Clifford was ticketed for allegedly assaulting a lobbyist outside council chambers. Then a crowd of celebratory business people involved in scoring the lucrative deal – including Houston Rockets legend Clyde Drexler -- fled from television cameras chasing them into a stairwell.
"I don't want to talk to anybody," said Clifford, surrounded by a noisy crowd and a crush of cameras outside the council chamber.
Earlier, city council members peppered Aviation Director Mario Diaz with questions about how the bids were analyzed. That's typical in these airport concession deals, as losing bidders find allies on council to raise questions about the arcane process of selecting the winners.
Council members allied with the losing bidders, which included the Pappas family restaurants, tried but failed to convince their colleagues to basically send the contracts out for rebidding.
Despite her friend's involvement in the winning bid, the mayor rejected the notion that she unduly influenced the process.
One aspect of the airport concession deal is still on hold, as city attorneys research whether a Starbucks counter inside one of the winning businesses violates a previous deal with another coffee vendor.
"I just think that we're allowed to have personal relationships with folks," she said. "And we have to rely on the process."
