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Ford arena -
Johnson
Delay. Delay. Delay.
It was a rush to buy, but nothing but delays in paying for the Ford Park Entertainment Complex that Kevin Johnson of Renaissance Development Group was allegedly ready and willing to execute in 2020.
Now entering 2022, Johnson said that he is “almost” ready to fill his end of a bargain he entered into over a year ago. The deadline to pay, as explained by Jefferson County Judge Jeff Branick, was roughly 10 months ago.
“They said they were almost ready to close,” Branick said of an email he received from Johnson at the beginning of 2022. “So, we told them … if it’s not in the next week, we’re going to need to revisit where we are as a court and whether we want to continue in the contract any further.”
Branick said the county has been in communication with Johnson’s attorney, as well, but the conversation just parrots Johnson’s excuses.
“They were almost ready,” Branick retells of Johnson’s story this time. “Christmas holidays and COVID slowed them down a lot.”
They were almost ready in October 2021, too. And in August 2021. And in March 2021, when payment was due.
“We’re going to discuss whether we’re ok with it,” Branick said of an Oct. 26 meeting with County Commissioners and County Attorney Kathleen Kennedy. “We’re going to have to get to the point where commissioners court says ‘Enough is enough,’ or ‘We’re willing to wait’ – and I don’t know where we’re at with that.”
Johnson et al were the sole bidders for Ford Park when the county embarked on a couple-week turnaround bid invitation in August 2020, exacted outside the confines of purchasing law that requires an appraisal of public property before it’s sold. At that time, Johnson signed that Renaissance was ready to pay $22 million for the $43 million appraised complex, although the bidder failed to submit audited financial documents as required by the bid specifications. Due to the lack of financial paperwork, not the unlawfulness of the bid process itself she explained, Purchasing Agent Deborah Clark recommended the bid be rejected on Sept. 1, 2020. Just over 30 days later, the Renaissance crew was again named as the sole bidder on a new bid invitation for Ford Park. The price Johnson was willing to pay didn’t change much, but the requirement for the bid did – removing language that would have ensured audited financial documents and support showing Johnson actually had $22 million – or even $22 – to pay for the property.
Prior pitches to the county have likewise not manifested as Johnson would claim. In the media, Renaissance front man Johnson boasts an anticipated multimillion-dollar investment in turning Ford Park into a gamblers’ paradise, but he shared the same fevered pitch of future-looking dreams when touting another, The Palms at Pleasure Island, just a few short years ago. Operated under the Renaissance LLC by wife Patti Renee Sepeda-Johnson, according to the couple’s bankruptcy filings, Johnson assured the public in 2014 that The Palms would soon be open to the public after a long repair process necessitated by hurricane damage in 2008. However, the city of Port Arthur has been footing the bill for the property, as well as pondering expenditures to taxpayers for the facility’s reopening, ever since. A visit to The Palms, 1901 TB Ellison Parkway, shows the locale to resemble a jungle more than the waterfront hideaway Johnson promised.
Ford Park, according to County Auditor Patrick Swain, currently costs taxpayers roughly $6.6 million annually to operate. The funds afforded the entertainment complex, per Swain’s schedule, include a $1.7 million operating subsidy, annual debt service of $4.7 million, and $250,000 forwarded to the complex’s operation via Hotel Occupancy Tax (HOT) allocations. Although Johnson was to have paid for and acquired Ford Park by March 2021, due to the delinquency of the purchase payment, the county auditor has budgeted for Jefferson County taxpayers to continue to foot the entertainment complex’s bills through October 2022.