Marketplace may take bid

Deirdre Newman

The Orange County Fair Board may reopen the bidding process for the

Orange County Marketplace to a competitor of Tel Phil Enterprises,

which has run the swap meet at the fairgrounds for 34 years.

On Tuesday, the board will discuss a recommendation from the state

Department of General Services, which suggested the board should

still consider a bid from American Park N’ Swap, even though it was

missing a mandatory document.

The fair board originally recommended that the award go to Tel

Phil, since its proposal met all the requirements.

Since the state’s opinion is purely a recommendation, Tel Phil

officials hope it won’t cause fair board officials to change their

mind.

“We’ve been successful for 34 years because we pay a lot of

attention to detail and we were pretty methodical and meticulous in

the way we responded,” President Jeff Teller said. “We can’t

understand why a bidder would omit such a critical document. We feel

we had to play by the rules and the other bidder should have played

by the same rules.”

The document American failed to include would have shown that the

company’s board of directors had approved the proposal and the

corporation would abide by the terms in the proposal, Teller said.

A spokesperson for American said the omission was a simple

oversight since the company submits hundreds of bid proposals a year,

and the company faxed it over as soon as the error was brought to its

attention.

“Obviously, we think the bid we submitted for the Orange County

Marketplace is a very competitive bid, and our hope all along is they

would make some judgment call that the bid should be [considered],”

said Wendy Watkins, vice president of corporate communications. “And

the reason it was pulled out of the running was because a very minor

piece of paperwork was missing.”

Fair President Becky Bailey-Findley said the fair board has a few

options Tuesday: accepting the state’s opinion, rejecting it or

rejecting it in part.

When the board recommended awarding the bid to Tel Phil, American

protested with the Department of General Services.

Three weeks ago, Tel Phil filed a temporary restraining order to

keep the bid proposals under wraps until the fair board made its

final decision. The Superior Court granted the order, said Stewart

Suchman, attorney for Tel Phil.

Teller stressed that Tel Phil Enterprises is family-owned and

family-operated, in contrast to American, which is a Buffalo,

N.Y.-based subsidiary of one of the country’s largest private

corporations.

“The Marketplace is Tel Phil’s main business,” Teller said. “We’re

a local business and we took a lot of care in making sure we gave

[the proposal] a completely detailed response. This is our core

business. It’s not a sideline.”

* DEIRDRE NEWMAN covers Costa Mesa and may be reached at (949)

574-4221 or by e-mail at [email protected].