Highway projects in S.A. are left hanging

Ballenger Construction has three Texas Department of Transportation road project contracts in Bexar County. Ballenger Construction has three Texas Department of Transportation road project contracts in Bexar County. Photo: Mike Fisher Photo: Mike Fisher Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Highway projects in S.A. are left hanging 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

Ballenger Construction, a Rio Grande Valley-based company, has defaulted on all eight of its road and drainage contracts with the city of San Antonio and on some of its state projects, officials said Thursday.

While a Texas Department of Transportation official wouldn't say whether Ballenger defaulted on state highway projects in San Antonio, work on Interstate 10, Wurzbach Parkway and Medical Drive has been affected or put on hold, two TxDOT officials recently confirmed.

On Monday, San Antonio officials learned that Ballenger could not complete the work, which now has been turned over to two surety companies to finish, said Mike Frisbie, director of the city's Capital Improvement Management Services.

All of the projects were part of the city's 2007 bond; half of them were substantially complete.

At least two Ballenger employees, who asked not to be named, said the company laid off workers Monday but declined to give the number.

Ballenger representatives couldn't be reached for comment late Thursday at their San Antonio offices or their corporate headquarters in Harlingen. Officials had not returned two previous calls made by the San Antonio Express-News.

A message sent Thursday night to an email address on the company website bounced back.

The default was surprising to Frisbie, partly because of the vast scope of the company's work: Between 2000 and 2012, Ballenger had secured more than 100 TxDOT construction contracts across South and Central Texas, state records show.

“This scale is unusual,” Frisbie said. “Ballenger's a large company.”

As of mid-November, more than 20 of Ballenger's TxDOT projects were incomplete.

In San Antonio, that includes a $36 million project to widen I-10 from Huebner Road to Loop 1604; two of the final sections of Wurzbach Parkway, bid at $50 million for both segments; and construction of an underpass at Medical Drive and Fredericksburg Road, set to cost $12 million.

The state also recently ended its contract with Ballenger to build an underpass on Texas 151 but that was due to the discovery of an endangered spider in August that required TxDOT to redesign the project.

Last month, San Antonio TxDOT officials said I-10 was behind schedule by at least several weeks and that the Medical Drive underpass project was on hold because Ballenger had struggled to pay its subcontractors and materials providers.

“They have payment issues on all of their projects,” TxDOT San Antonio District Engineer Mario Medina said then.

Construction of the Medical Drive underpass was to begin in early September; because of the company's payment issues on its other projects, TxDOT had not given Ballenger the go-ahead, Medina said.

TxDOT San Antonio spokesman Josh Donat, speaking with the Express-News last month, also confirmed that portable toilets were repossessed from the I-10 and Wurzbach Parkway work sites for at least one day but later were replaced. Other equipment also had been repossessed and then returned, he said.

Regarding which state projects are in default, TxDOT spokesman Bob Kaufman said Thursday the situation is fluid.

“We are working closely with the contractor and its bonding companies to move forward with projects in the district and ultimately achieve a logical and timely completion of them,” Kaufman said in a statement. “Furthermore, TxDOT will monitor areas around these projects to assure safety measures are in place for the traveling public.”

On Thursday, Medina said he could not comment on Ballenger beyond Kaufman's official statement. He also said he could not say whether Ballenger construction workers had been on the I-10 and Wurzbach Parkway projects this week.

I-10 construction is set to be done by summer 2014. The unfinished sections of Wurzbach Parkway are scheduled to open to traffic by 2015.

It's not exactly clear how long Ballenger has been in financial trouble. Several lawsuits have been filed in Bexar County District Court against Ballenger this year, starting in March. One company won a $118,000 judgment against the construction firm and others for failing to pay a subcontractor on three city road projects. Of the eight projects Ballenger was working on for the city of San Antonio, four were mostly complete, Frisbie said.

He said the remaining four — reconstruction and widening of Hunt Lane and Marbach Road, replacement of a Rittiman Road bridge, and Culebra Road drainage improvements — were 70 percent to 80 percent complete.

Ballenger was founded in 1937, according to the company website, originally doing drainage and land clearing projects. Today, the company's “core business is construction of highways, streets and roads,” the website said.

A woman who answered the phone at the company's San Antonio offices Thursday said no one was there. She said Ballenger's Harlingen office had closed for good but she did not know when.

The phone at Ballenger's Corpus Christi office was disconnected.

A former Ballenger employee, reached by phone Thursday, said she did not want to give her name but confirmed she and other employees were laid off Monday.

A second employee also confirmed layoffs.

“I'm loyal to the end and it is what it is at the moment,” the man said. “I worked for this company and I respect them. Unfortunately, what happened, happened.”

vdavila@express-news.net