St. Paul city officials knew that Black Bear contract had years to go

St. Paul's parks director and a City Council member knew that a Como Park food vendor had years left on its contract with the city before another vendor could take its place.

Yet, along with other city officials, they chose to challenge the contract anyway — touching off a messy legal dispute that ended with the city paying the vendor $800,000, a near-record legal settlement.

What parks and recreation director Mike Hahm and Council Member Amy Brendmoen knew about the city's contract with Black Bear Crossings is shown in e-mails and other papers obtained under the state Data Practices Act.

The documents — thousands of pages of court records, letters and e-mails — don't spell out exactly what caused city officials to stop encouraging co-owner David Glass' plans to renovate the cafe, and to demand instead that he produce the business' accounting records in what he interpreted as a move to intimidate him.

Nor do they offer any evidence that Hahm and Brendmoen, who have since said they are in a relationship, conspired to push out Black Bear.

But they do make clear that Hahm and Brendmoen knew the contract practically ensured that Black Bear would remain at the city-owned Como Lakeside Pavilion for another five years if Glass chose to extend it, which he did within the legally prescribed period.

"The [Black Bear Crossings'] contract term ends 12/31/13 but has a renewal provision that makes the likely effective end 12/31/18," Hahm wrote Brendmoen in a January 2012 e-mail.

But Brendmoen told Glass that she "personally [did] not see it that way." And Hahm wrote Glass a short time later that the city wouldn't renew his contract before first evaluating "the performance of the public cafe and concessions" — a condition not spelled out in the contract.

Glass responded with a letter from his attorney taking issue with Hahm. A few months later, he and his wife, Pamela, sued the city for breach of contract. The city then terminated the contract, using Black Bear's record of delinquent rental payments as justification.

A Ramsey County judge ruled in May that the Glasses were eligible for damages, while declining to force extension of the lease because of bad blood between the parties. In August, the city settled with the couple for $800,000, the third-largest settlement in the city's history.

Hahm said Friday that the city plans to install a new vendor at the pavilion in January, once Black Bear moves out. He said that response to the city's solicitation of proposals for the site has been good and that 16 prospective vendors recently took a look at the pavilion.

"The judge spoke and now we're focused on moving forward," he said.

Black Bear Crossings moved into the city-owned Como pavilion in 2000 and renewed its contract at the city's urging in 2009. Glass agreed to a five-year term and said city officials told him the contract for his cafe and coffee shop would be automatically extended another five years.

But in the years since, the model for park food has changed. Several Minneapolis concessionaires — such as Sea Salt at Minnehaha Park and Tin Fish at Lake Calhoun — now offer rich and varied menus, driving up park traffic and revenues.

And St. Paul officials have been eager to catch up. Two years ago, according to a memo in the papers, Mayor Chris Coleman met with Sea Salt owner Jon Blood to talk about expanding into City House, a renovated grain elevator on the Mississippi River near downtown. Officials remain interested in locating an eatery there.

Brendmoen, who was elected to the council in 2011 representing the Como and North End areas, first sought information from Hahm in January 2012 about Black Bear because "several constituents" apparently had expressed concerns about the business.

Hahm seemed surprised to hear it. "If there are issues out there about performance, we'd certainly like to know what they are," he responded by e-mail. "Any help there is appreciated. Nothing has bubbled up that I am aware of that I can recall of any significance."

Her response was diplomatic. "I do get the sense that [Glass] is open to ideas and input, but it's important that we be kind and constructive. He's got the lease until 2020 or something," she wrote back.

E-mails show that Coleman's top lieutenant at the time, Deputy Mayor Paul Williams, soon got involved in an effort to persuade Glass to remake Black Bear into a destination eatery like Sea Salt, or find someone who would.

In an e-mail to Brendmoen, Williams laid out his premise for setting up a meeting with Glass: "The way I framed it was I had sat in on a couple of conversations about the Pavilion and upcoming contract, and heard a few of the concerns."

When Brendmoen reported to Williams that Glass had agreed "to meet with the dudes who run Sea Salt," the deputy mayor directed mayoral cultural adviser Joe Spencer to "give this some priority" and said "it would be a big win on numerous fronts."

Glass later testified in a sworn affidavit that Williams told him that "we know downtown that your contract is airtight. Your problem is with [Brendmoen]. It's political."

As the weeks passed and pressure from the city intensified, formerly friendly e-mail exchanges between Glass and Brendmoen became chilly. A month before he filed the lawsuit, Glass had stopped calling her "Amy" and addressed her instead as "Council Member Brendmoen."

When the City Council approved the Black Bear settlement in August, Brendmoen was out of the country on a public policy tour. Council Member Dan Bostrom was the lone dissenting vote; other council members, while expressing regret, said the settlement was the best possible outcome for the city.

Bostrom said that the city's handling of the case was "totally irresponsible," and repeated his call for Hahm to resign.

"What a tragic way to do it — we can push this guy [Glass] out of the way, the contract be danged," Bostrom said. "We should be setting an example in government and not just going out and doing stuff like this."