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June 1, 2009
Negotiating With Your Contractor: The Atlantic Yards As Kitchen Renovation Metaphor
Noticing New York
Michael D.D. White's brilliant, entertaining, sardonic, must-read blog entry riffs on ESDC CEO Marisa Lago's testimony at Friday's Atlantic Yards hurly-burly — and it could come in handy, too, if you're planning any home renovations.
At Friday’s state senate hearing on Atlantic Yards, Marisa Lago (head of the Empire State Development Corporation and responsible for Atlantic Yards on behalf of Governor Paterson) tried to make current negotiations with proposed project developer, Forest City Ratner easy to explain by likening Atlantic Yards to a kitchen renovation. That therefore allowed Ms. Lago to tell Senators Bill Perkins, Velmanette Montgomery and Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries that Forest City Ratner is going to give the public a lot less than the public was once supposedly going to get by telling the legeslators that there isn’t going to be a garbage disposal, the level of trim and finishes won’t be the same (Formica countertops instead of granite?) and that the stove was only going to have four burners rather than six.
...We rather like the kitchen renovation metaphor. Maybe it provided Ms. Lago with an out to avoid saying things in less blunt, specific or informative terms but we think that it does help make some things easier to explain.
...NOTICING NEW YORK’S KITCHEN RENOVATION RULES
(Applicable also to NYC megadevelopments)1. When selecting a contractor, get bids.
2. If you can (as noted above), it is good if you can bid out your kitchen renovation when things are otherwise slow in the construction business.
3. Establish a schedule by which the contractor must complete the renovation.
4. Specify ahead of time all the work to be done before bidding out the job.
5. Don’t let the contractor demolish the kitchen before you have a contract.
6. Don’t front-load the payments to the contractor.
7. If you advance money to the contractor that is going to be used to buy materials, you probably want to specify that the materials bought will belong to you rather than the contractor.
8. If you’re trying to economize and save money, don’t let the contractor turn the job into a bigger, more costly job than it needs to be by going crazy and ripping out and throwing away a lot of walls, baseboard moldings and appliances that are perfectly serviceable and ought still to be used.
9. Check out your contractor’s credit worthiness before engaging him.
10. Maintain the option to terminate and bring in another contractor- especially if the contractor wants to renegotiate after accepting the job.
Click through to learn all the ESDC's secrets for how not to get the most from your contractor!
Posted by eric at June 1, 2009 3:52 PM