E-mail shows Philadelphia Parking Authority was told of lawyer's dual roles

Top executives at the Philadelphia Parking Authority - owner of the site for the proposed Family Court building - were told more than two years ago that a lawyer for the courts planned to join developer Donald Pulver on the $200 million project, e-mails obtained by The Inquirer show.

"We contemplate that Jeff and Don will jointly develop the project," lobbyist Lois Hagarty wrote in a March 2008 e-mail to Vincent J. Fenerty Jr., the authority's executive director.

"Jeff" was a reference to Jeffrey B. Rotwitt, a prominent real estate lawyer hired by the court system in 2006 to find a site for a new courthouse.

"My intention and Don's intention was to be open and honest on the transaction," Hagarty said Thursday. A former state representative, she wrote the e-mail in her capacity as a lobbyist for Pulver.

But Fenerty and other authority staff members say a passing reference in the middle of an e-mail was hardly a real disclosure that Rotwitt and Pulver had become codevelopers on the 14-story courthouse project at 15th and Arch Streets.

Fenerty said he took it to mean simply that Rotwitt and Pulver would be working together to make sure the project was completed, just as he and his staff were trying to do.

"We were working to develop the project, too," Fenerty said. "It doesn't say they are partners. That didn't throw up any red flags to me. It just didn't."

If the message had gotten through, the debacle that now threatens the Family Court project could have been avoided.

The e-mail was sent eight months before Pennsylvania Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille, on Rotwitt's advice, began paying fees now totaling about $12 million without any signed development contracts.

The Family Court deal collapsed in May after The Inquirer revealed that Rotwitt was collecting fees on two sides of the deal - from the courts and from Pulver. Castille, who was personally supervising the project, says he had no idea about that until The Inquirer started asking questions.

Castille says the arrangement is a conflict because he was depending on Rotwitt's advice on what to pay Pulver and other consultants. The FBI is now investigating the deal.

Fenerty, too, has said he never knew about the Pulver-Rotwitt arrangement until he read about it in The Inquirer. He has harshly criticized Pulver, saying the developer this spring denied any deal with Rotwitt and sent him a letter that was carefully worded to keep their deal hidden.