Jan 26, 2020 5 min read

In 2009 – shortly before it was awarded a $10.5 million contract to build a parking garage on California University of Pennsylvania’s campus – Manheim Corp. made what appears to have been the first of a series of payments totaling tens of thousands of dollars to the public school’s athletic program.

Eleven years later, Cal U. and the Mt. Lebanon contractor are embroiled in a legal battle stemming from the partial collapse of the five-story Vulcan Garage. On move-in day in August 2016, falling construction material narrowly missed causing injuries, and the apparent structural defects mean the garage has been unused since.

The donations – outlined in records provided to the Observer-Reporter on Thursday in response to a request under the state Right To Know Law – appear to have occurred during a period that overlaps with the contract award and subsequent construction.

The payments come to almost $67,700.

But J. Kevin Foster, an Atlanta-based expert on business ethics, warned that he “wouldn’t draw any type of conclusions” that the donations were improper, based on a description from a reporter about the situation.

The reason for a gift is relevant to that question, he said. It also matters, he added, that these payments were made to an institution and not a person or people.

“I don’t think it’s uncommon for a business that does work with a university or a charity to make donations to that charity,” Foster said, “as long as those donations weren’t made with the intent of getting the work.”

Still, the newly released and heavily redacted documents show that the relationship between the school and the company was at one point cozy enough for the company to pay to participate in golf fundraising events for university athletics. That once-friendly partnership has curdled into a bitter legal battle in which the school, the builder and others involved in the project deny liability and blame each other for the problems.

The O-R’s request covered the period from 2008 to 2012. The first two payments from Manheim to the school – one for $1,500 and the other for $794 – were shown in records as having a posting date of May 22, 2009. They went to university golf outings that doubled as athletics fundraisers.

The deadline to submit project bids was 10 days earlier.

Another payment was posted on June 30, a day after the university and the company executed their contract. For that year and ensuing ones, the golf payments totaled $17,694.

The last one in the records provided to the O-R was for $2,900. It occurred in early 2012. A registration document shows company President David Mantheiy signed up for the outing that year. His handicap was 26.

In March 2010 – the year the garage was built – the company made a $50,000 “athletic scholarship pledge,” which it fulfilled in a series of payments through November.

David Pidgeon, spokesperson for the State System of Higher Education, didn’t answer questions about the situation, including whether or not Manheim was the only bidder that made such donations. He said the agency “typically does not comment on matters involving specific litigation.”

“What I can say is our public universities have more than enough incentive to responsibly operate within state law that governs the awarding of contracts,” he added in an emailed statement. “The process the State System follows protects Pennsylvania taxpayers and students by ensuring proper, lawful, transparent methods of evaluating project proposals such as building construction.”

Manheim’s attorneys didn’t return a request for comment by press time, nor did a spokesperson for the university.

Among the points of contention in the university’s lawsuit, which was filed in the Washington County Court of Common Pleas two years after the collapse, is Manheim’s use of precast concrete, as opposed to steel-reinforced concrete that officials specified in their request for proposals.

Manheim’s proposal to use carbon-fiber reinforcements instead didn’t stop it from receiving the contract. The supplier, Shockey Precast Group, is now one of the parties in the legal case.

The O-R first asked for records of donations from Manheim to the Foundation for Cal U., a nonprofit affiliated with the school, in the weeks after the school brought the case. The university at first refused to release those records and went to court to argue that it had a legal basis to withhold them.

Late last year, after unsuccessfully trying to lodge an appeal with the state Supreme Court, Cal U. officials said the foundation had searched its archives and determined no records existed. That legal fight resulted in a Commonwealth Court precedent that records of private companies’ donations, unlike those of individuals, are subject to the state open records law.

The O-R is now contending in court the university showed bad faith by waiting as long as it did to check for the existence of those records. The newspaper seeks to recover its legal expenses, and secure a $1,500 sanction against Cal U.

In December, the O-R refiled the request to cover donations made directly to university programs.