The council last week reaffirmed an offer to pay 23p in the pound of the £3m owed to creditors. The design team for the project, which was cancelled in July 1998, is due to meet next week to discuss the offer.
The Harbourside Centre was unable to pay the design team for work done up to RIBA stage D when the Arts Council refused to fully fund the scheme. The centre has now gone into a company voluntary arrangement, an alternative to liquidation or receivership, and a supervisor has been appointed to negotiate the creditors' fees with the Arts Council.
The design team includes German architect Behnisch, Behnisch and Partner, Buro Happold Arup Project Management, Gleeds and Max Fordham and Partners.
Max Fordham and Partners' representative on the design team creditor's committee, Anne Snow, said: "Our position is that we are quite willing to go through the formal process of mediation that the Arts Council has offered, but we feel at the same time that we would wish to get the parliamentary ombudsman involved."
Snow said the council had undervalued the work the design team had done and ignored the findings of an independent assessor brought in by The Harbourside Centre's supervisor to estimate how much of the RIBA stage D the team had carried out.
