Embittered bidder

The Public Housing Administration, or TOKİ, announced Monday that it will not go ahead with the planned development project in Halkalı for a world-class entertainment and nature park.

Instead, the organization has decided to invite a new round of bidders to the table for new offers to develop the park. TOKİ canceled the previous winning bid after it weighed up the offer and decided the guaranteed revenue offered by the proposal was not enough. The partnership made of Astay Real Estate and Aş- Özyazici Construction won the contract in the second round of the first tender, with the highest bid, guaranteeing TOKİ approximately YTL 84.8 million in revenue from the project.

The partnership would have developed 1.4 million square meters of public land, of which 1.24 million square meters would be reserved for the nature and entertainment park that would be open to the public. The terms of the tender included a condition that the winner must develop the public part of the project Ğ the nature and entertainment park which includes parks, cafes, movie theaters and a cultural center Ğ free of charge, in exchange for the right to develop the remainder of the land as they deem fit. The Astay Real Estate and Aş- Özyazici Construction partnership envisioned using the remainder of the land for roughly 20,000 residences and commercial developments.

The winning bid's proposal, which the partnership submitted to the tender board, estimated a total of YTL 585 million in revenue for the whole project, of which the partnership would guarantee YTL 84,798,750 to TOKİ. Furthermore, it would pay one percent of revenue exceeding YTL 585 million to TOKİ. The tender board which envisioned a YTL 1.5 billion investment for the project found the guarantee amount too low and canceled the result of the tender that concluded Nov. 4.

More bidding

TOKİ will reopen the tender for the project Nov. 27 at 11 a.m. The agency will also scale back some of the conditions to qualify for participation in the tender. The previous tender rules stated that only firms who had work completion certificates of 100,000 square meters could take part in the bidding process. That number has been lowered to 70,000 square meters for the upcoming bid. Another condition that has been changed to be more accommodating to higher bids is the time restraint on the actual construction of the nature and entertainment park. The first round of bids required that participants agree to complete the construction of the entire public space in three years. In the upcoming round, the time restraint has been increased to four years.

The president of TOKİ, Erdoğan Bayraktar, said the agency’s vision was to give Istanbul a world-class environment and nature park and for them to do that there needed to be more competition. "We are easing the conditions to enter the bid and the restrictions on the projects we are willing to accept," said Bayraktar. Companies will be able to enter the bid with general projects under the new guidelines but this does not mean that the agency will settle for a project it does not find up to its standards, he said.

Meanwhile, Astay Real Estate issued a statement saying the whole process had been in the spirit of transparency, openness and fairness and that TOKİ was within its legal rights in reopening the bidding. In the statement the company also noted that, while TOKİ reserved the right to find the guaranteed amount inadequate, the partnership had not been notified of the estimated guaranteed revenue that TOKİ wanted.