Mountain towns say contractor bungled, stole from public housing projects

The Town of Frisco’s new workforce housing apartments at 619 Granite St. (Town of Frisco)

A general contractor accused of doing shoddy work on a workforce housing project in Breckenridge is now being sued by the neighboring town of Frisco and accused of stealing more than $300,000 from a similar project there.

MW Golden Constructors in Castle Rock has been around since 1984 and handles a variety of projects along the Front Range and in the mountains. In 2021 and 2022, respectively, it was hired by the two Summit County towns to oversee their public housing projects.

In a November lawsuit, the Town of Breckenridge blamed MW Golden for problems at the Block 11 Apartments, which have 27 units spread across three buildings. Namely, those buildings’ heating systems routinely fail and have since the project was completed in 2023.

“These repeated failures have forced the tenants occupying these buildings, Breckenridge’s local workforce, to endure repeated periods without reliable heat and the use of space heaters to provide any heat to their units for the last two winters,” the town alleges.

Breckenridge says it has asked MW Golden to replace the defective HVAC systems, which the builder refuses to do. So, it is suing for breach of contracts and warranties.

MW Golden admits that it won’t replace the HVAC systems but denies it is to blame for their consistent failures. It points the finger at an architectural firm and an engineering firm and believes they should be held accountable.

“The alleged defects and damages are attributable to design errors and omissions,” the company’s attorneys argued in a Feb. 25 court filing in Summit County District Court.

Meanwhile, the Town of Frisco sued MW Golden in that same court on Feb. 13. And that mountain town’s allegations go beyond claims of malfunctioning heaters.

“MWG abused its position as construction manager to engage in several types of overcharging and fraudulent billing designed to drive (up) the project’s costs,” Frisco alleges.

That town hired MW Golden to turn 619 Granite St., a former mobile home park for Colorado Department of Transportation workers, into 22 condos, including 11 for CDOT’s use. The job’s maximum price was set at $12.3 million and its completion date was October 2024.

Frisco alleges that MW Golden did what it could to inflate the costs to $12.3 million by billing the project for materials and equipment that MW Golden used elsewhere, billing for employees who never worked at the job site and billing for insurance it never acquired.

At times, the contractor’s overbilling rose to the level of theft, Frisco says. For example, it billed $196,000 for subcontractor insurance, never obtained an insurance policy and kept the tax dollars. Or when it required Frisco to buy vehicle tires, a snow removal machine and a golf tournament entry fee for MW Golden’s owner — spending that was described as “earth work,” according to this month’s lawsuit.

MW Golden owner Jason Golden, who is accused of overseeing the overbilling scheme and is therefore a defendant in Frisco’s lawsuit but not Breckenridge’s, initially agreed to discuss both cases with BusinessDen but later stopped responding to interview requests.

Frisco’s lawyers are Chris Carrington and Ben Hudgens at Richards Carrington in Denver. MW Golden’s are Brandon Guinn and Charles Westby with the SGR firm, also in Denver.