PACT CANCELLATION THREATENED FLYAWAY CONTRACT BREACHED?

Byline: James Nash Staff Writer

Raising the stakes in a standoff with the company building a Park and Ride facility at Van Nuys Airport, officials from the city's airport department on Monday threatened legal action to cancel the $34 million contract.

Los Angeles World Airport officials on Monday issued a written ``notice of contractor default'' to Sylmar-based Tutor-Saliba Corp., a politically connected builder that was awarded the contract for the Van Nuys FlyAway project in 2003.

Tutor-Saliba has mishandled dozens of items related to the FlyAway, from not adequately reinforcing steel ``stirrups'' at a parking garage to using improperly mixed concrete, according to a letter from airport officials to the contractor.

``(Tutor-Saliba's) inability to construct a parking facility that is structurally sound is a material breach of the intent of the contract and is obviously unacceptable,'' Kim Day, the interim executive director of Los Angeles World Airports, wrote to Tutor-Saliba Corp. President Ronald Tutor.

``Delay in the completion of the parking structure will have serious impact on parking revenue and will also impair LAWA from using the new terminal to its full design capabilities.''

Tutor was not available to comment Monday. In previous interviews, he has defended his firm's work and insisted that LAWA would not remove the company from the job.

In fact, LAWA officials have attempted to salvage the Tutor-Saliba contract. On May 25, they reported that the contractor has made ``good progress'' on correcting problems and noted that LAWA and Tutor-Saliba had agreed on solutions to 21 of 29 items on which Tutor-Saliba was cited for defective work.

But on Monday, Day wrote that Tutor-Saliba still has failed to provide a plan to fix the defective parking garage stirrups and has continued to fall behind on its schedule for finishing the FlyAway project.

James Nash, [phone]

james.nash(at)dailynews.com