Miscommunication blamed for contractor missing stadium meeting

One of the Allegiant Stadium vendors that was scheduled to meet last week with the Las Vegas Stadium Community Benefits Plan Oversight Committee said a scheduling conflict resulted in the company’s failure to make the meeting.

“We very much would’ve liked to be in attendance (Thursday) and share disappointment that we were not able to begin the face-to-face conversations with the committee,” Jim Kohler, president of Levy Restaurants’ west division, said in an email.

Levy and ASM Global, formerly AEG Facilities, were scheduled to explain their hiring plans at last week’s meeting.

Levy, the food concession contractor, and ASM Global the stadium operations contractor, will be responsible for most of the hiring of vendors operating at the stadium once it’s completed.

When Allegiant Stadium begins operations in July, a certain percentage of minority workers must be hired to conform with state requirements.

Under terms of the Community Development Plan adopted by the Las Vegas Stadium Authority, the Raiders are required to “encourage the design of bid packages, facilitation of partnership, and business retention programs for contracting, subcontracting, purchasing, and procurement opportunities during the operations phase of the project where it is commercially reasonable to do so.”

The use of Small Business Enterprise-qualified and Women-Minority Business Enterprise firms have exceeded hiring goals established by Senate Bill 1 for stadium construction. Committee records show 62 percent of the construction hours have been performed by SBE and WMBE companies, far exceeding the 38 percent goal.

Details of that hiring were supposed to be detailed at the public meeting. But the people with that information didn’t show up.

Committee Chairman Ken Evans said it was “unacceptable” that representatives of the companies weren’t present with member Peter Guzman adding he was “pissed off” that they weren’t there. Member Don Webb, the chief operating officer of the Raiders’ StadCo stadium construction subsidiary, theorized that it was simply a miscommunication.

“When the request to join the meeting came in late last week, we had a longstanding schedule conflict that unfortunately was not flexible,” Kohler said. “As Mr. Webb points out, it was a simple miscommunication between everyone involved. We have been excited and aligned with the Raiders around the SBP from the beginning and look forward to participating at future meetings.”

Representatives of ASM Global did not return emails and calls requesting comment Friday and Monday.

Evans said he expected to reschedule a meeting within a month. The committee normally meets quarterly and the next scheduled gathering is April 23 — a date likely to be changed because it’s the first day of the NFL Draft in Las Vegas.

Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on Twitter.