Restaurateur alleges bid rigging marina contract
A Buffalo restaurant operator is crying foul over the bidding for a city contract, claiming the process appears to have been designed to steer the job to “favored bidders.”
The City of Buffalo last year decided it needed a new manager for the Erie Basin Marina after a December 2024 audit found that the previous contract with Smith Boys had yielded just $930 in revenue for the city since 2014.
Comptroller Barbara Miller-Williams’ report — a follow-up to a critical audit from the year before — led city lawmakers to scrutinize Smith Boys’ management of the marina and its agreement. Councilmember Mitch Nowakowski, in whose Fillmore District the marina lies, went so far as to suggest the city “should not be in the business of owning a marina” if it couldn’t turn a profit.
The Council and the comptroller also both asked for reviews of the way the Department of Public Works awards and oversees revenue-generating contracts with vendors.
The city sought new proposals in November or a contract to run not just the marina but the former Hatch restaurant. The city now is poised to award a contract to a newly formed company called Marina Management Group, LLC. One of the LLC’s partners, Jonathan Nash, is a former Smith Boys employee. The company is registered at his Lovejoy residence.
Nash’s job at Smith Boys: managing the Erie Basin Marina for the past decade.
On top of that, the most recent operator of the city-owned restaurant at the marina claims the bidding process was rushed, rigged and “makes no financial sense.”
Evetta Applewhite, the owner of Evelina’s Kitchen, said so in a letter to lawmakers and in-person testimony at the Council’s Finance Committee meeting on Tuesday.
Applewhite has been operating the former Hatch restaurant since July, when she entered into an agreement with leaseholder Angelo Canna. In her letter to Council members and in person on Tuesday, she suggested the fix was in for Marina Management Group from the get-go.
Applewhite said that her husband in August “learned from a reliable source” that the city intended to terminate Canna’s lease — good through the end of 2027 — two years early. The city would then seek proposals to combine management of the marina and the restaurant, her husband was informed, and already had “two specific individuals” in mind to take over.
Everything the "reliable source” told her husband came true. Three months later, on Nov. 19, the city informed Canna by letter that it was terminating the restaurant lease. The next day, the city began soliciting bids to run both operations.
Applewhite called this evidence of “advance disclosure of a government procurement strategy to favored private parties,” a violation of state law. How did her husband’s source know the city’s plan, she asked, three months before there was any public notice of a bid opportunity?
Applewhite decided to take a shot at the contract herself.
She reached out to marina operators across the country to see if they would join her in putting together a proposal. However, the city initially gave bidders just 13 days — including weekends and the Thanksgiving holiday — to formulate and submit their plans. Two of seven operators demurred, saying they were interested but the short turnaround “made meaningful due diligence impossible.”
In her letter, Applewhite wrote the “artificially short deadline” excluded “legitimate bidders while favoring parties with advance knowledge.”
The city ultimately extended the window for submissions by a week, but she said those allegedly favored parties already had “a head start.”
Applewhite also questioned the city’s decision to combine the operation of the marina and its restaurant into one contract.
The contracts previously had been consolidated, until a 2014 audit by then-Comptroller Mark Schroeder concluded the facilities would be better run — and the city would realize more revenue — if they were separated. Schroeder was proven correct, Applewhite noted. After the contracts were separated, city revenue from the Hatch increased 77 percent, according to a followup report by Schroeder.
“The City now proposes to reverse this successful model by combining both operations into one contract,” Applewhite wrote. “This makes no financial sense—it reduces multiple revenue streams into one. It makes no logistical sense—it is far easier to find a restaurant operator in Buffalo than a certified marina management firm.”
She concluded that it makes sense only “if it was designed for a specific, pre-identified bidder who was given advance notice.”
Applewhite clearly meant Marina Management Group headed by Nash, the former Smith Boys employee. On the restaurant side of the partnership is Jason Davidson, a restaurateur who runs Liberty Hound at Canalside and the Terrace at Delaware Park. Applewhite’s letter describes communications between herself, the competing bidders and city employees that suggest Marina Management Group knew they’d won the contract by the end of December — and possibly a month earlier than that.
Applewhite concluded her letter by arguing the city should return to separate contracts for the marina and the restaurant. She hoped, if the city did so, that her proposal would warrant a second look.
“We seek NO FAVORS!” she wrote. “Just a fair shot on a level field!”
Councilmembers Leah Halton-Pope, Zeneta Everhart and Nowakowski sympathized with her plight. At Tuesday’s meeting, they suggested the sublease with Canna may not have been legitimate. Everhart said Applewhite had been “caught in the middle” between previous operators and the city’s changing plans. Halton-Pope said she’d vote no on the contract unless some accommodation could be made for Applewhite. None addressed the contention that the bidding process favored Marina Management Group.
The contract award is tabled for now. Department of Public Works Commissioner Nolan Skipper told lawmakers the contract paperwork was incomplete, so there was nothing yet to approve. Skipper said he hoped to re-submit the request for approval next week.