A longtime associate with the troubled Your Black Muslim Bakery in Oakland today missed his deadline for producing documents to prove that he is qualified to get a lighting improvement contract with BART for more than half a million dollars.
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BART has consequently terminated its contract with Nedir Bey and his company, Solar Eclipse, according to the transit agency’s spokesman, Linton Johnson.
Johnson said BART is now exploring its options to get the lighting improvement work done at the North Berkeley station, where Solar Eclipse was to have worked.
It’s also unclear if BART is still eligible for state grant money that would have helped pay for the project.
Johnson said, “We are exploring what if anything we can do with the grant funding.”
Bey, 38, pleaded no contest to a felony false-imprisonment charge after a 1994 incident in which he and other bakery associates were charged with torturing and robbing a man with whom they had a real estate dispute.
According to Oakland City Councilman Ignacio De La Fuente, Bey also still owes the city of Oakland $1.1 million because he never repaid a 1996 “economic revitalization loan” that was supposed to train welfare recipients to be home health aides.
Bey formerly was a member of Your Black Muslim Bakery, which went bankrupt two years ago.
The organization’s leader, Yusuf Bey IV, is awaiting trial on three counts of murder for the deaths of journalist Chauncey Bailey and two other men in the summer of 2007.
At the BART board’s Oct. 22 meeting, staff members recommended that the entire contract for lighting improvement projects at the 12th Street Oakland City Center and North Berkeley stations be awarded to LINC Lighting & Electrical Group of San Jose.
LINC submitted the lowest bid for the project and was the only one of the three bidders whose bid was lower than the amount that was estimated by a BART engineer.
But BART directors disregarded the staff’s report and voted to award part of the contract to Solar Eclipse.
BART Director Bob Franklin said Solar Eclipse submitted the lowest estimate in the original bidding for the lighting improvement project and an error by the transit agency’s staff prevented the company from providing a revised bid based on updated bidding specifications.
Johnson said BART entered into a contingent contract on Oct. 30 with a joint venture headed by Solar Eclipse that also included UWA Electric and Dang Construction.
The contract called for the joint venture to perform $562,129 worth of work at the North Berkeley station and BART also had an option to have Solar Eclipse to do another $438,000 worth of work at the station.
But Bey and Solar Eclipse missed a 5 p.m. deadline today to provide license, bond and insurance documents for the project.
Johnson said one option BART will explore is to have LINC, which will work on the 12th Street Oakland City Center station, also do the work at the North Berkeley station.
Bey hasn’t been available for comment since his firm was awarded the contract.
Solar Eclipse isn’t listed in the phone book or in directory assistance and a search on Google didn’t turn up a web site for the company.
