Half Shell Raw Bar Received $84k Emergency Repair From City

Half Shell Raw Bar Received $84k Emergency Repair From City

By Pru Sowers

Konk Life Staff Writer

An unexpected repair bill at the Half Shell Raw Bar building has forced the city to make an emergency expenditure of $84,000.

The building at 231 Margaret St. is owned by the city and leased to the restaurant owners. Under the terms of the lease, signed in February, Half Shell Raw Bar is responsible for repairs to the roof while the city is responsible for structural repairs.

When the restaurant owners demolished the existing roof recently, they found significant areas of rotted joints, missing sheathing and unsupported stove hoods, according to Doug Bradshaw, the city’s Director of Port and Marine Services. Those areas are considered structural and, as a result, the city is responsible for repairing them.

“When they started ripping off the roof, there wasn’t much under it structure-wise. [The damage] was all hidden,” Bradshaw said.

Because Half Shell Raw Bar was under a tight timeline to make the repairs, there wasn’t time for the city to bid out the repair work. As a result, city commissioners, acting in their oversight of the Caroline Street Corridor and Bahama Village Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA), voted unanimously to make an emergency procurement of $84,025, paid to three local contractors to make the repairs.

“Formally bidding the project in addition to Bight Board and CRA approvals would have delayed the Half Shell Raw Bar’s reopening of the kitchen and full restaurant approximately sixty to ninety days as well as put several of the restaurant employees out of work,” Bradshaw wrote in a memo the Key West Bight Management Board last month.

City ordinance allows for emergency procurements where the cost exceeds $20,000 and there is a threat to public health, safety and property.

Emergency procurement spending is a familiar process at the Key West Bight and Seaport. Last April city commissioners approved a $29,999 emergency purchase to fix several areas of unexpected concrete cracking at the Waterfront Brewery as the city helped get the former aquarium building on William Street back into shape for the new tenant. That emergency purchase was on top of another $35,000 the city, through its Key West Bight Board, spent earlier on more unexpected repairs at the brewery and restaurant building.

In addition, The Key West Bight Enterprise fund paid out another $250,000 to replace windows and doors and make other concrete spalling repairs in 2012 at the former aquarium.

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