Alexandria City Council learned Tuesday (May 12) that the city received just one proposal for a potential operator of the Torpedo Factory Art Center during its procurement process.
Earlier this year, City Council allowed a procurement process to advance to select a new operator for the Torpedo Factory Art Center at 105 N. Union Street. Bids were due April. 27.
At Tuesday’s City Council meeting, Mayor Alyia Gaskins announced the city received a bid from Scout Urban LLC, a collective that focuses on adaptive reuse and installation art. City Council voted to allow city staff to review and evaluate the bid.
Julian Gonsalves, the city’s strategic projects and public-private partnerships director, noted that several organizations conducted a site visit or indicated they were not moving forward with an application. He noted the request for proposals was clear on maintaining the facility as an art center.
“It’s because of the nature of the Torpedo Factory Art Center, and the fact that there are very few similar entities around the country,” Deputy City Manager Emily Baker told City Council. “We did market this fairly widely to try to see if there was some entity out there that maybe we didn’t know of that could have been interested, but we did not receive any interest other than the one from Scout.”
Councilman Canek Aguirre said the city should be transparent about why it received only one bid — citing the Torpedo Factory’s unique operating model and staff’s due diligence in reviewing similar entities across the U.S.
“That needs to be part of what’s out there publicly, because otherwise we’re going to get scrutinized for ‘well, they just picked one group and they just went forward.'” Aguirre said. “That’s the last thing we need considering what’s happening across the river in D.C., and the [Lincoln Memorial] Reflecting Pool being given a big contract for several [million] dollars just to paint the Reflecting Pool a color that will not reflect and defeat the purpose of calling it a reflecting pool.”
The request for proposals did include a provision about exploring displays of historical archaeology artifacts. That came after a request from the Alexandria Archaeological Commission that the Torpedo Factory operator selection process incorporate the Alexandria Archaeology Museum, which is located in the art center. The Torpedo Factory was floated as a potential landing place for the 18th century ship hull found at the Hotel Indigo site on the waterfront in 2015.
Baker said the procurement process makes clear that the city has no obligation to move forward with the operator. City staff will evaluate the proposal, negotiate with Scout if desired and return to City Council with a recommendation — likely in the fall.
Councilman John Taylor Chapman asked staff to provide details on what would happen if the operator bid is or isn’t accepted.
“The only request that I would have when staff does come back with a recommendation to say yes or no, it’s being able to give some context to council on kind of what a no means, and what that route now means if we’re starting over, starting from scratch, or … being able to kind of tell us kind of the full picture of, ‘hey, you have this entity now running the Torpedo Factory.'”
Vice Mayor Sarah Bagley said feedback from entities that did not end up applying will be valuable.
“The reality is if we don’t go with this proposal for some reason, we are going to have tough choices to make about how to build our governance and our business plan moving forward,” Bagley said. “And it would be useful if these entities that toured or considered would be willing to share with us a little bit of their feedback about what was the stumbling block, or what did they see as the core financial challenge or the core marketing challenge to the space.”
