Apr. 23—Several construction companies say they haven’t been paid for millions of dollars of work on a large, refrigerated warehouse that recently opened on Portland’s waterfront and is meant to boost Maine’s food and beverage exports.
Local subcontractors Epoxy Floors North, Gorham Sand and Gravel, and H.B. Fleming put liens on the property for a total of $1.5 million of work they said went unpaid at the Maine International Cold Storage Facility. H.B. Fleming and Gorham Sand and Gravel escalated these disputes by filing lawsuits.
Now, the courts must decide who is on the hook to pay the bills: the project’s developer, London-headquartered Amber Infrastructure; its general contractor, Illinois-based FCL Builders; or the state of Maine, which owns the land where the warehouse sits. The businesses are in financial limbo while they wait.
“Because FCL lost money on the job is not my problem. I don’t care. I did what I was supposed to do, and they should pay me,” said Craig Roy, owner of Epoxy Floors North.
Roy said his company is owed nearly $117,000 for caulking and resin flooring work. “That’s a lot of money for me. That’s my money out of my pocket in your building that you’re conducting business with,” he said.
Epoxy, H.B. Fleming, and Gorham Sand and Gravel aren’t the only ones waiting on their money: At least three other subcontractors told the Press Herald they are also awaiting payment and are in touch with attorneys about escalating the matter.
Meanwhile, FCL, the general contractor, has requested a $12.26 million lien bond, which can be used to pay debts once the disputes are resolved. It’s unclear whether that is the total amount owed to all subcontractors on the project.
“It’s been brutal the whole time with (FCL),” said David Bobo, a project manager at Genex, which worked on the facility for nine months. “From the start of the project right through the end, we’ve been chasing checks.”
FCL declined to address the claims, saying it would not discuss active litigation. Amber Infrastructure and its attorney did not respond to requests for comment.
UP AND RUNNING WITH UNPAID BILLS
The Maine International Cold Storage Facility opened Feb. 14, nearly 10 years after the idea was floated.
The 106,000-square-foot refrigerated warehouse can reach temperatures as low as minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit and is equipped to store 22,000 pallets.
It has been highly anticipated, charted as Maine’s tool to expand freight through Portland. That includes capturing some of the nearly $2 billion in frozen seafood that’s exported from the Eastern Seaboard but does not pass through Portland.
The facility also has been promoted as an opportunity for state food and beverage companies to get a competitive edge and access to markets.
Export shipping in Portland has been growing steadily since a boom was triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. More than $1 billion of goods were exported from the port in 2024, according to data from the U.S. Commerce Department.
Amber Infrastructure leased land from Maine Port Authority on Commercial Street to bolster that growth. And the state contributed $8 million to prepare the property for construction. The building sits next to the International Marine Terminal, Maine’s sole shipping container terminal — which project leaders said will be a boon for shippers, the terminal and the storage facility.
Amber has said the project cost $56 million in total, nearly double the initial estimate of $30 million.
PUTTING IN THE WORK, AND THEN SOME
H.B. Fleming, a South Portland construction company, filed a complaint in the Cumberland County Superior Court in June 2024 after spending a year furnishing steel piles and working on the warehouse’s foundation.
Gorham Sand and Gravel, a Buxton excavation company, was hired to install erosion and sedimentation control in June 2023. The company filed its complaint last week, alleging some of the problems stemmed from the developer and general contractor not conducting a full geotechnical report.
Gorham Sand and Gravel also claims FCL, the general contractor, did not disclose the extent of issues with soil at the site “due to concerns regarding cost.” As a result, the scope of work was more involved and complicated than expected.
For Gorham Sand and Gravel, that required almost $918,619 more than the $3.36 million it was originally contracted to be paid. H.B. Fleming’s base contract increased from $2.98 million to $4.86 million. Roy, the Epoxy Floors owner, said the extra work increased his contract from $112,828 to $189,000.
Gorham Sand and Gravel submitted 50 requests to add more work and money to the project, all of which it alleges FCL approved, according to the complaint. But payments eventually slowed to a halt.
FCL did not do its due diligence to get approval from Amber before authorizing subcontractors to do additional work, the business claimed.
To date, legal filings indicate that Gorham Sand and Gravel is owed $915,824; H.B. Fleming is owed $438,615; and Epoxy is waiting on $116,831.
Of the subcontractors that have not taken legal action Genex, a New Hampshire company that did around $550,000 of work for the facility’s front office, said in an interview it is waiting for $65,000. Maine Line Fence said it is owed $57,290 — the entirety of its contract. CTR Maine owner Richard Smith declined to say how much he is owed. But he said the small Westbrook company, which installed traffic control gates, is feeling the impacts of overdue payments.
“It may be a small amount to a giant company, but we’re a small company. Even a few dollars makes a difference when you’re working in this economy,” Smith said. “I have to pay my suppliers, and I have to pay my people that work on the job. I’ve taken care of that. We have paid our obligations, and we need to collect the money.”
EVADING BLAME
Neither Amber nor FCL denies the subcontractors are owed money. But they disagree about who owes it.
Amber contends FCL never got approval for the extra work and extra costs — though the developer was aware of the work because it had a consultant on site reporting how the project was advancing, including the increasing costs.
FCL says it repeatedly requested approvals from Amber, but the developer “has refused to compensate FCL,” according to the general contractor’s countersuit against Amber.
Meanwhile, the Maine Port Authority is awaiting two more rulings on the liens put on the Commercial Street property.
As a first step in pursuing the money, Gorham Sand and Gravel, H.B. Fleming, and Epoxy all requested liens equivalent to the money they are owed. Those mechanic’s liens would require Maine Port Authority to sell the property and use that money to reward the claimants.
But a judge ruled in the Maine Port Authority’s favor in February that a lien cannot be placed on state property. And Maine Department of Transportation Commissioner Bruce Van Note, chair of the port authority board, said he expects the remaining liens will go that route, too.
“We’re monitoring, engaging and making sure we’re protecting the public interest, but also watching the parties of interest and hoping they come to an agreement,” Van Note said.
Epoxy, Gorham Sand and Gravel, and H.B. Fleming do not care who is to blame or how that dispute should be resolved. They simply want the money they are owed — plus interest and compensation for legal fees.
“Any disagreement among the aforementioned parties, however, does not justify withholding payment as it is undisputed that FCL signed charge orders approving … additional work; FCL directed (Gorham Sand and Gravel) to perform the additional work … and (Gorham Sand and Gravel) performed the additional work in a workmanlike manner to the benefit of FCL, Amber and MPA,” one lawsuit states.
WHO WILL PAY?
Andrew Kaufman, an attorney who teaches contractual and transactional law at the University of Maine School of Law, said this case is more complex than typical ones involving misuse of funds by a general contractor.
“Not infrequently, we see cases where the owner paid the general, and the general took the money and misappropriated the funds … spent it on vacation and didn’t pay the subs,” he said. “This doesn’t seem like that.”
In its counterclaim, FCL says it “submitted” requests for the extra work to be done, “seeking Amber’s approval,” but Amber has refused to compensate FCL for the subcontractors’ work.
In a legal response, Amber denied the majority of allegations FCL made.
And while the subcontractors contend that FCL was negligent in not receiving the final sign-offs from Amber, Kaufman said there are legal precedents in place that could work in FCL’s favor.
“When one party continues to perform and it benefits the other party, there are principles we call ‘unjust enrichment,’ sometimes ‘quantum meruit,’ — that it’s not fair that the developer here got benefited at the expense of the general if the general was really operating in a circumstance where it reasonably expected there was going to be some kind of payment, some kind of compensation for all of this extra work,” Kaufman said.
No matter who ends up paying, Kaufman said it can take years for subcontractors in these kinds of cases to receive compensation while they wait for these questions to be answered by the courts.
“The number of parties that you have involved, and the number of claims and counterclaims that are going on adds to the complexity of the matter, and adds to, typically, to the time it takes to get the case ready to be tried, and then for the case to be tried,” he said. “Where is the money to pay these people going to come from?”
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