NEW ORLEANS -- A day after he lost a bid for a 10-year lease in City Park, Morning Call co-owner Bob Hennessey said he is considering legal action while he continues to hunt for a new location for the nearly 150-year-old coffee and beignet stand.
“We’re not too happy with that decision,” Hennessey said. “It’s just really feeling like we didn’t get a fair deal.”
The lease for the space in the park’s casino building was awarded Thursday to rival Café du Monde. Morning Call has been there since 2012.
Any challenge to the lease could be a long shot.
City Park said Morning Call’s bid was disqualified since its operators missed a mandatory pre-bid conference ahead of an opening of the bids on May 9. The pre-bid conference and its required attendance was included in a public notice issued about the availability of the lease.
But Hennessey countered the claim that Morning Call missed the pre-bid conference, saying instead that his firm was late. “The meeting was over as soon as it started. It didn’t really pass the smell test. They knew we were coming,” he said.
Hennessey and his brother, Mike, were still allowed to submit a bid, which was the highest of the three the park considered, according to a review of them by WWL-TV after they were opened.
But park CEO Bob Becker said during Thursday’s board meeting that “Morning Call was not considered responsive,” The New Orleans Advocate reported. That means the park did not consider Morning Call to have abided by the rules of the bid document.
Hennessey said that if the park sought to disqualify Morning Call’s bid, it should have sent a letter notifying them of that intention as well as hold a hearing, something he said never happened.
A City Park spokesman on Friday morning said he was looking into that, but the park noted on Thursday that the park’s attorneys had reviewed the bids.
WWL-TV legal analyst Pauline Hardin said letters to notify a bidder of disqualification and to offer them a hearing are required by the state's Public Works Act, but the lease in City Park does not fall under the definition of a public work. Instead, the lease for the space likely falls under the state's Public Lease Law, Hardin said.
Since the solicitation for bids specified a bidder attend the mandatory conference, the park was likely within its rights to disqualify Morning Call for not being there, Hardin said.
City Park and Hennessey have said they do not yet know when Morning Call will have to move out.
“We really don’t have a timeline for it (the transition),” Jay Roman, a manager with Café du Monde’s parent company, told WWL-TV on Thursday night. “I know there’s going to be some notice that has to be given.”
The decision to award the lease to Café du Monde leaves the fate of Morning Call, which opened in the French Market in 1870, uncertain.
Hennessey and his brother recently shut down their Fat City location in favor of the City Park store. They said the Metairie location’s business had dropped off in recent years and that the store in the park is where they would focus their attention.
In April when announcing the Metairie closure, Hennessey said he was looking to possibly open another location but had nothing to share about that at the time.
He said Friday that he continues to look for another location for Morning Call.
Asked if he and his brother have met with any real estate agents or had leads on another location, Hennessey said yes but declined to offer details.
“We’re looking everywhere,” he said. “Nothing’s off the table.”
