The boarded-up brick building of the Broad Street Market
Another Harrisburg City Council member has indicated that he may change his vote in favor of a construction manager to oversee the restoration of the Broad Street Market.
In a statement, Ralph Rodriguez became the second council member on Monday to publicly state that will reconsider his vote from two weeks ago, when council voted 5-2 against the administration’s selection of a construction manager for the burned-out brick market building.
“This project is paramount to our beautiful city’s economic development and tourism,” Rodriguez stated. “For these reasons, I feel comfortable requesting a vote reconsideration on the matter to begin the BSM process.”
Two weeks ago, Rodriguez joined a majority of council to vote against the administration’s choice of Harrisburg-based Alexander Building Construction Co., based on concerns over the city’s selection process. On Monday, he said that those concerns had been alleviated in recent days.
“I did not feel the mayor’s office provided a case worthy of a selection for a project of this size,” he said, in his statement. “In the days since, the mayor’s office has done a much better job of providing the requested materials and explaining why Alexander is the obvious choice for a project of this magnitude.”
Earlier on Monday, council member Crystal Davis said that she would change her vote and agree to hire Alexander as construction manager. Davis and Rodriguez’s “yes” votes would appear to give majority support to Alexander, assuming that council members Ausha Green and Shamaine Daniels continue to vote in the affirmative.
A vote reconsideration is not currently on council’s agenda for Tuesday’s legislative session. However, the issue can be brought up from the floor during the course of the meeting.
The initial vote to hire Alexander failed after several council members said that they believed the administration’s process for selecting a construction manager was not equitable or fair. The administration rejected that assessment, saying that the four firms in the running were judged based on a strict scoring mechanism.
After council’s “no” vote, the administration said that it would need to restart the search process from scratch, which, they stated, would take many months to complete. Already, the market’s brick building has sat untouched—charred, boarded up and largely roofless—for nearly 11 months, since the July 2023 fire, which displaced about two-dozen vendors.
In addition, last week, Harrisburg’s two state House members issued a letter urging council to reconsider its vote, saying that the city would sacrifice potential state funding for the market if a construction manager were not selected before the next state budget cycle.
Like Davis, Rodriguez on Monday stated that he remained committed to ensuring equitable processes for city contracting.
“That does not negate that we will begin serious conversations to ensure everyone has a fair opportunity to do business with the city of Harrisburg,” he said.
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