Spaceport America to repair nine-year-old operations center without seeking reimbursement

by Kathleen Sloan | December 15, 2020
4 min read
Aerial view of Spaceport Operations Center
An investigation of the Spaceport Operation Center's failing construction concluded that the "project had way too many problems on all sides and that it would probably be very difficult to adjudicate and prove blame and responsibility for the defects encountered.” Photograph courtesy of Spaceport America

New Mexico Spaceport America plans to spend about $750,000 to repair the Spaceport Operations Center, the certificate of occupancy for which shows the building will turn nine in February.

Spaceport Interim Executive Director Scott McLaughlin explained at the New Mexico Spaceport Authority board’s Dec. 2 meeting that the steel understructure and the overlying concrete dome are shifting and cleaving due to improper drainage. (Read the Sun’s coverage of the meeting here.)

The board did not inquire if reparations should or had been sought. The Sun asked McLaughlin those questions, as well as who designed and constructed the building and at what cost.

In a Dec. 8 email, McLaughlin described the repairs as urgent. “Currently, the only space we have is the SOC,” he explained, noting that the building is home to the Spaceport’s firehouse, security office and several NMSA offices. In addition, it is “where an Emergency Operations Center (EOC) would be located for any crisis.”

Staff conducted a six-month investigation, McLaughlin stated, to determine if architect and engineering warranties or the state “Statute of Repose” law (37-1-27) could be pursued to pay for the repairs.

“Without going into too much detail,” McLaughlin stated, “our conclusion was that the project had way too many problems on all sides and that it would probably be very difficult to adjudicate and prove blame and responsibility for the defects encountered.”

Improper drainage has caused the SOC’s steel understructure and the overlying concrete dome to shift and cleave, and it will cost an estimated $750,000 to repair the resulting interior and exterior damage. Photograph courtesy of Spaceport America

The Spaceport initially hired a group from Idaho Falls to construct the building for nearly $2.7 million. Bateman-Hall, Inc. was the general contractor, Engineering Systems Solutions the engineer and Dome Technology the thin-dome specialist.

Construction was started in the fall of 2009, but, after several change orders and with the building incomplete, Spaceport America issued a stop notice to Bateman-Hall in late spring 2011.

Spaceport America then hired SMPC Architects and SDV Construction of Albuquerque to complete the project, McLaughlin said. These firms “expressed concerns about soils reports and drainage.”

The payment they received “is not readily available,” McLaughlin stated.

The Spaceport’s investigation of the SOC’s construction problems, which was completed this March, included a review of “all available (but generally incomplete and out of order) project documentation” and interviews with “many of the architects, engineers, project managers, and field superintendents who were on site during the construction period,” according to McLaughlin.

A possible claim under the Statute of Repose was also evaluated. It was not pursued, McLaughlin stated, because of “the “multiplicity of actors involved in the project; several changes made after the start of construction; a risk-reward analysis; the fact that we believe the available documentation is not sufficient to successfully support a complaint under the statute; and the critical urgency of the repairs.”

At its Dec. 2 meeting, the Spaceport Authority board also approved a $9 million expenditure to build a Spaceport Technology and Reception Center.

McLaughlin showed the board a rendering of the Spaceport visitors’ center, designed by the IDEAS Group, to illustrate his STARC presentation. The Sun, aware IDEAS had been paid millions to provide build-ready plans for a Spaceport visitors’ center and a Truth or Consequences visitors’ center, asked McLaughlin why a new architect was being sought for the STARC building.

McLaughlin clarified that STARC is not intended to be the ultimate visitor’s center; it will be a multipurpose building. His use of the IDEAS rendering was just to give the board an idea of what the STARC building might look like.   

McLaughlin provided the Sun with detailed information about the scope of work that had been undertaken by the IDEAS Group and the cost of the firm’s services, but offered no clarification about why the IDEAS plans could not be adapted to the STARC building, other than to confirm that they would not be used.

“NMSA contracted with Integrity Arts and Technology, Inc. (dba IDEAS) during July 2011, for the provision of labor, supervision, management, supplies and consumables, materials, tools and equipment required to perform Visitor Experience Development services for Spaceport America,” he stated.

“Among other things, the work included spaceport branding, website redesign, overall visitor planning/programming, exhibit and attraction acquisition and installation, architectural renditions and engineering designs of facilities associated with visitors’ experience. 

“The original contract executed in July 2012 was for a not-to-exceed amount of $7.5 million; it was amended in August 2013 by the addition of $1.5 million to the not-to-exceed amount. Note that the work product of this contract is owned by NMSA, and their use in our presentations creates no obligation.”

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Kathleen Sloan is the Sun’s founder and chief reporter. She can be reached at kathleen.sloan@gmail.com or 575-297-4146.
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Understanding New Mexico's proposed new social studies standards for K-12 students

“The primary purpose of social studies is to help young people develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world.”
—National Council for the Social Studies 

Reader Michael L. Hayes of Las Cruces commented: What impresses me is that both the proposed standards and some of the criticisms of them are equally grotesque. I make this bold statement on the basis of my experience as a peripatetic high school and college English teacher for 45 years in many states with many students differing in race, religion, gender and socioeconomic background, and as a civic activist (PTA) in public education (My career, however, was as an independent consultant mainly in defense, energy and the environment.)

The proposed social studies standards are conceptually and instructionally flawed. For starters, a “performance standard” is not a standard at all; it is a task. Asking someone to explain something is not unlike asking someone to water the lawn. Nothing measures the performance, but without a measure, there is no standard. The teacher’s subjective judgment will be all that matters, and almost anything will count as satisfying a “performance standard,” even just trying. Students will be left to wonder “what is on the teacher’s mind?” or “have I sucked up enough.”

Four other quick criticisms of the performance standards. One, they are nearly unintelligible because they are written in jargon. PED’s use of jargon in a document intended for the public is worrisome. Bureaucrats often use jargon to confuse or conceal something uninformed, wrong or unworthy. As a result, most parents, some school board members and more than a few teachers do not understand them.

Two, the performance standards are so vague that they fail to define the education which teachers are supposed to teach, students are supposed to learn, and parents are supposed to understand. PED does not define words like “explain” or “describe” so that teachers can apply “standards” consistently and fairly. The standards do not indicate what teachers are supposed to know in order to teach or specify what students are supposed to learn. Supervisors cannot know whether teachers are teaching social studies well or poorly. The standards are so vague that the public, especially parents or guardians, cannot know the content of public education.

Three, many performance standards are simply unrealistic, especially at grade level. Under “Ethnic, Cultural and Identity Performance Standards”; then under “Diversity and Identity”; then under “Kindergarten,” one such standard is: “Identify how their family does things both the same as and different from how other people do things.” Do six-year-olds know how other people do things? Do they know whether these things are relevant to diversity and identity? Or another standard: “Describe their family history, culture, and past to current contributions of people in their main identity groups.” (A proficient writer would have hyphenated the compound adjective to avoid confusing the reader.) Do six-year-olds know so much about these things in relation to their “identity group”? Since teachers obviously do not teach them about these other people and have not taught them about these groups, why are these and similar items in the curriculum; or do teachers assign them to go home and collect this information?

Point four follows from “three”; some information relevant to some performance measures requires a disclosure of personal or family matters. The younger the students, the easier it is for teachers to invade their privacy and not only their privacy, but also the privacy of their parents or guardians, or neighbors, who may never be aware of these disclosures or not become aware of them until afterward. PED has no right to design a curriculum which requires teachers to ask students for information about themselves, parents or guardians, or neighbors, or puts teachers on the spot if the disclosures reveal criminal conduct. (Bill says Jeff’s father plays games in bed with his daughter. Lila says Angelo’s mother gives herself shots in the arm.) Since teacher-student communications have no legal protection to ensure privacy, those disclosures may become public accidentally or deliberately. The effect of these proposal standards is to turn New Mexico schools and teachers into investigative agents of the state and students into little informants or spies.

This PED proposal for social studies standards is a travesty of education despite its appeals to purportedly enlightened principles. It constitutes a clear and present danger to individual liberty and civil liberties. It should be repudiated; its development, investigated; its PED perpetrators, dismissed. No state curriculum should encourage or require the disclosure of private personal information.

I am equally outraged by the comments of some of T or C’s school board members: Christine LaFont and Julianne Stroup, two white Christian women, who belong to one of the larger minorities in America and assume white and Christian privileges. In different terms but for essentially the same reason, both oppose an education which includes lessons about historical events and trends, and social movements and developments, of other minorities. They object to the proposal for the new social studies standards because of its emphasis on individual and group identities not white or Christian. I am not going to reply with specific objections; they are too numerous and too pointed.

Ms. LaFont urges: “It’s better to address what’s similar with all Americans. It’s not good to differentiate.” Ms. Stroup adds: “Our country is not a racist country. We have to teach to respect each other. We have civil rights laws that protect everyone from discrimination. We need to teach civics, love and respect. We need to teach how to be color blind.”

Their desires for unity and homogeneity, and for mutual respect, are a contradiction and an impossibility. Aside from a shared citizenship, which implies acceptance of the Constitution, the rule of law and equality under the law, little else defines Americans. We are additionally defined by our race, religion, national origin, etc. So mutual respect requires individuals to respect others different from themselves. Disrespect desires blacks, Jews or Palestinians to assimilate or to suppress or conceal racial, religious or national origin aspects of their identity. The only people who want erasure of nonwhite, non-Christian, non-American origin aspects of identity are bigots. Ms. LaFont and Ms. Stroud want standards which, by stressing similarities and eliding differences, desire the erasure of such aspects. What they want will result in a social studies curriculum that enables white, Christian, native-born children to grow up to be bigots and all others to be their victims. This would be the academic equivalent of ethnic cleansing.

H.E.L.P.

This postmortem of a case involving a 75-year-old women who went missing from her home in Hillsboro last September sheds light on the bounds of law enforcement’s capacity to respond, especially in large rural jurisdictions such as Sierra County, and underscores the critical role the public, as well as concerned family and friends, can play in assisting a missing person’s search.

Reader Jane Debrott of Hillsboro commented: Thank you for your article on the tragic loss of Betsey. I am a resident of Hillsboro, a friend of Rick and Betsey, and a member of H.E.L.P. The thing that most distresses me now, is the emphasis on Rick’s mis-naming of the color of their car. I fear that this fact will cause Rick to feel that if he had only gotten the facts right, Betsey may have been rescued before it was too late. The incident was a series of unavoidable events, out of everyone’s control, and we will never know what place the correct color of her car may have had in the outcome. It breaks my heart to think that Rick has had one more thing added to his “what ifs” concerning this incident.

Diana Tittle responded: Dear Jane, the Sun undertook this investigation at the request of a Hillsboro resident concerned about the town’s inability to mount a prompt, coordinated response to the disappearance of a neighbor. From the beginning, I shared your concern about how our findings might affect Betsy’s family and friends. After I completed my research and began writing, I weighed each detail I eventually chose to include against my desire to cause no pain and the public’s right to know about the strengths and limitations of law enforcement’s response and the public’s need to know about how to be of meaningful assistance.

There was information I withheld about the state police investigation and the recovery. But I decided to include the issue of the car’s color because the individuals who spotted Betsy’s car emphasized how its color had been key to their identification of it as the vehicle described in Betsy’s Silver Alert. Because the misinformation was corrected within a couple of hours, I also included in this story the following editorial comment meant to put the error in perspective: “The fact that law enforcement throughout the state was on the lookout in the crucial early hours after Betsy’s disappearance for an elderly woman driving a “light blue” instead of a “silver” Accord would, in retrospect, likely not have changed the outcome of the search” [emphasis added].

I would also point to the story’s overarching conclusion about the inadvisability of assigning blame for what happened: “In this case, a perfect storm of unfortunate circumstances, many of them beyond human control, hindered the search that it would fall to Hamilton’s department to lead.”

It is my hope that any pain caused by my reporting will eventually be outweighed by its contribution to a better community understanding of what it will take in the future to mount a successful missing person’s search in rural Sierra County.

1 thought on “Spaceport America to repair nine-year-old operations center without seeking reimbursement”

  1. Peter Lawton

    There seems to be a fair amount of casual ineptness in the management of the Spaceport. I would still like to see some sort of budget and what sort of annual revenues are being brought in. I’ve seen this sort of permissiveness before when the state of New Mexico has appeared to ignore or cover up blemishes in a particular venture (e.g. Eclipse Aviation) that appears to be very newsworthy and popular, particularly when all the operational and fiscal details are not readily available.

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