Issue link: https://newsleader.uberflip.com/i/86226
Sarasota News Leader October 5, 2012 paid. "That turned out to be not the case," Stephenson says. According to Stephenson, his crew finished its work in late August and received "a blank refusal" when asking for payment. Both Urbanek and Stephenson say they met with a Kellogg project manager around the time the Walmart finally opened, and the three came to a "theoretical agreement" (Stephen- son's phrase) for Urbanek and Stephenson to at least break even on the project. "We said, 'Just pay us our costs. I don't need to make anything on this. Just let us walk away whole,'" Stephenson says. Urbanek writes that he and Stephenson "part- ed ways satisfied" that they would be paid, but so far, no dice. Stephenson says he re- ceived $12,000, but the total for the project should have been around $45,000. Page 16 Stephenson says he's exploring legal op- tions, such as a lien, which would halt finan- cial transactions associated with the project. While he is angry with Kellogg, he says Ur- banek does bear some of the blame for the sit- uation. "In a perfect world," Stephenson says, "he never would have signed the contract that he signed." "They should have ended my contract, paid me for what I had done and written a new contract for Stephenson," Urbanek admits. I went up there initially to do two or three days of work, which turned into 10 days in order to get them bailed out. Richard Stephenson Contractor Stephenson says he has found himself in situations like this much more frequently in recent years. "Since 2008, it is much more prevalent in the industry," he says. "Since everything took a turn south, people are doing work for cost or less, just to get work, to get cash flow." Kellogg CFO Ed Doughty says Walmart may not pay his company for another three or four months, after inspections and verifications, and that any allegations that Kellogg has not paid out money it owes are simply not true. "Subs may not be paid for several months from this point out, not because we're withholding anything from them, but because that's how contracts work," Doughty says. "We'll get to the bottom of it with our subs," Doughty says. Gulf Coast Builders Exchange Executive Di- rector Mary Dougherty-Slapp says her organi- zation, a trade association for the commercial contracting industry, has not seen any spike in complaints like Ubernak's and Stephenson's, but they do come in "sporadically." She calls the two men's case "atypical." "When you have a reputable general contrac- tor and reputable customer," she says, "folks are going to get paid in a timely manner" — at least they should. "The bottom line," she says, "is there's just a certain amount of ethics in- volved."