Subcontractors

The bowling alley business dream of Baltimore Ravens star Ray Lewis lies half-built in a far corner of the Hunt Valley Town Centre. Cinder blocks and plywood cover the entrances and windows; rubble and metal vents sit piled inside a chain-link fence. Lewis announced MVP Lanes with great fanfare more than two years ago. It was supposed to include a posh sports-themed bowling alley, restaurant, sushi bar and live radio booth - and create more than 100 service and construction jobs on the site of a former Wal-Mart.

An advocacy group filed a complaint Friday with the federal government alleging that a Baltimore-based company put hundreds of employees at risk by failing to protect them against asbestos. Alexandra Rosenblatt and Jonathan F. Harris, staff lawyers with the Public Justice Center, said WMS Solutions LLC required its employees, who typically earn from $11 to $14 an hour, to pay for medical exams, training and protective equipment such as gloves, goggles and respirators. If workers didn't pay upfront, the costs were deducted from their paychecks, according to the complaint.

MVP Entertainment, a planned Hunt Valley bowling alley and restaurant led by the Baltimore Ravens' Ray Lewis, is facing lawsuits from four subcontractors who claim they have not been paid for more than $600,000 worth of work. The project, which also would feature an arcade, sushi bar and pool tables, was announced in September 2009 with great fanfare, with its backers talking about the temporary and long-term jobs it would add to the Baltimore County economy. But Marc Rosen, Lewis' partner in the venture, said in a recent interview that financing for the project fell through over the summer after a bank couldn't provide an expected loan.

The bowling alley business dream of Baltimore Ravens star Ray Lewis lies half-built in a far corner of the Hunt Valley Town Centre. Cinder blocks and plywood cover the entrances and windows; rubble and metal vents sit piled inside a chain-link fence. Lewis announced MVP Lanes with great fanfare more than two years ago. It was supposed to include a posh sports-themed bowling alley, restaurant, sushi bar and live radio booth - and create more than 100 service and construction jobs on the site of a former Wal-Mart.

General Dynamics Corp. and its subcontractors expect to hire as many as 110 workers in Baltimore County who will work on computer systems for a new government program that will help retirees receive health care coverage, officials said Thursday. The defense contractor said Thursday that its information technology division won an $80 million award to work on the Department of Health and Human Services' Early Retiree Reinsurance Program. The program is part of the health care reform package that was passed this year and is intended to help retirees who are not yet eligible for Medicare obtain affordable insurance.

The cable television subcontractors who pierced a Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. natural gas pipeline in Westminster two hours before a nearby house exploded last month did not violate any state occupational health and safety guidelines, according to state officials.In a report released yesterday, Maryland Occupational Safety and Health (MOSH) said that neither Apollo Trenching Co. -- the Howard County company whose digging equipment struck the gas main Jan. 19 -- nor Prestige Cable Television of Maryland put employees at undue risk that afternoon.

Concern about the perception of possible bid-tampering has prompted the Schmoke administration to seek a revision in the bidding process for highly competitive and often lucrative city contracts.Mayor Kurt Schmoke agreed to a request that he seek the change, but he says he fears it could threaten the constitutionality of the city's minority set-aside law. The proposed change would affect the way prime contractors select minority subcontractors under the minority set-aside law.The set-aside law requires prime contractors to give minority subcontractors work equaling 20 percent of the bid. Three percent of the bid is earmarked for firms owned by women.

A major homebuilder's attempt to shift the cost of construction safety violations to its Maryland subcontractors has prompted protests and a call for state legislation to define responsibility for the fines.Subcontractors fear that the total shift in liability to them could spell their economic ruin and thwart the intent of state and federal job safety rules by completely exculpating big builders.The state's job safety agency says the legal move may impair enforcement of the law against prime contractors, who share responsibility for worker protection.

The Baltimore Health Department failed to collect financial reports from six of its subcontractors, which received more than $8.7 million in federal money, according to an audit set for release today.The subcontractor the audit highlighted as an issue of "greatest concern" is the $3.2 million Healthy Start Initiative, a prenatal support program for poor women that came under fire last fall amid allegations that the program's administrators misused millions of dollars.As a result of those problems, Healthy Start's executive director and chief financial officer were replaced.

With the nation's airlines farming out an increasing amount of maintenance work, the Federal Aviation Administration is struggling to monitor an intricate web of contractors that stretches around the world.Before deregulation of the industry in 1978, airlines did most of their work themselves, making it relatively simple for regulators to examine records and aircraft to ensure that procedures were being followed properly.But now that task is far more complicated than experts predicted even five years ago.U.

A Glen Burnie plowing contractor is suing the city for $5.9 million, alleging it has not been paid for snow removal services during the snowstorms of February 2010. "When there was snow up to our necks, they were glad to make a deal," said attorney Andrew D. Freeman, who is representing the Delmarva Group. "The city now regrets the deal it made" and has not paid the bill, he said. Delmarva filed suit Wednesday in city Circuit Court. The suit alleges Delmarva submitted a bid of $350 per hour per piece of equipment, which the city accepted.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Young and other Baltimore officials approved nearly $90,000 in city business last week with three companies that are barred from doing business in the state. The three companies were approved as subcontractors on deals to manage parking garages and locate underground utility lines. As members of the city's Board of Estimates, the officials voted to approve contracts that included two lawn-care subcontractors that had lost their state certification, in one case because of unpaid taxes.

Two years after C. William Struever's real estate empire collapsed and the once-ubiquitous developer dropped off Baltimore's radar, the urban visionary has reappeared as a managing director of a new company, working on the same kinds of projects that helped make his name. Struever is one of the founders of Cross Street Partners, a real estate venture made up of 28 employees who all once worked for Struever Bros., Eccles & Rouse, the company that changed Baltimore's landscape and that of other East Coast cities before coming apart in the throes of the recession, leaving a trail of lawsuits and unfinished developments.

MVP Entertainment, a planned Hunt Valley bowling alley and restaurant led by the Baltimore Ravens' Ray Lewis, is facing lawsuits from four subcontractors who claim they have not been paid for more than $600,000 worth of work. The project, which also would feature an arcade, sushi bar and pool tables, was announced in September 2009 with great fanfare, with its backers talking about the temporary and long-term jobs it would add to the Baltimore County economy. But Marc Rosen, Lewis' partner in the venture, said in a recent interview that financing for the project fell through over the summer after a bank couldn't provide an expected loan.

General Dynamics Corp. and its subcontractors expect to hire as many as 110 workers in Baltimore County who will work on computer systems for a new government program that will help retirees receive health care coverage, officials said Thursday. The defense contractor said Thursday that its information technology division won an $80 million award to work on the Department of Health and Human Services' Early Retiree Reinsurance Program. The program is part of the health care reform package that was passed this year and is intended to help retirees who are not yet eligible for Medicare obtain affordable insurance.

A second Maryland firm has sued the owner and general contractor of Baltimore's historic B&O Building in an effort to get paid for work done to complete the $65 million Hotel Monaco that opened there in late July. Attorneys for D.F. Smith Inc. of Glen Burnie, a masonry subcontractor, filed a complaint this week in Baltimore Circuit Court to establish and enforce a mechanic's lien against the property. The complaint filed by Michael P. Darrow of Hillman, Brown and Darrow PA states that Smith is seeking $29,761.

The doors to the little shop are locked. The paint is beginning to peel and the crab grass and dandelions shove through the white gravel lot once dominated by employee cars but reduced to a storage area for a handful of boats.Sun Machine Co. once was a thriving firm on the shores of Sue Creek near Essex. But today, the two-story, sand-colored concrete block building is nothing but a symbol of how deeply slashes in the defense budget have cut.Hundreds of subcontracting companies across the state -- most of them small and unknown to most people -- have either been driven out of business, like Sun Machine, or forced to slash their operations to stay afloat in what one person described as "the hidden pain of defense downsizing."

Two years after C. William Struever's real estate empire collapsed and the once-ubiquitous developer dropped off Baltimore's radar, the urban visionary has reappeared as a managing director of a new company, working on the same kinds of projects that helped make his name. Struever is one of the founders of Cross Street Partners, a real estate venture made up of 28 employees who all once worked for Struever Bros., Eccles & Rouse, the company that changed Baltimore's landscape and that of other East Coast cities before coming apart in the throes of the recession, leaving a trail of lawsuits and unfinished developments.

The City of Annapolis is to receive a nearly $5 million settlement from a construction contractor hired to renovate the police department building. Bladensburg-based J.G. Garcete Co. Inc. and its bonding company are to pay the city $3.95 million in cash, as well as a $980,000 balance which the city has already received, the city announced Monday. The city fired the construction company, which was renovating the police department, in 2007, and has since entered into litigation to recover damages from what the mayor called "shoddy" work.

A computer scheduled to be delivered to the International Space Station was sabotaged, possibly by a worker at a Texas subcontractor's plant, although NASA officials said yesterday that the damage would have posed no danger to the station. Several wires were cut inside the unit and two identical units, said Edmund Memi, a spokesman for Boeing Co., the main contractor for the space station. The sabotage, which was uncovered over the past week, appears to have occurred in early June, while the devices were still at Invocon Inc., an electronics firm in Conroe, Texas, about 30 miles north of Houston.