$540,000 Owed To Project's Workers
Newcastle Herald
Thursday October 16, 2008
THE already delayed Bellevue Hotel apartment block site has been shut down for a second time, with subcontractors owed an estimated $540,000 from six weeks' work.
The $7 million-plus Task Group building site was shut on Monday because of financial troubles engulfing its secured lender, Port Macquarie finance group Momentum Mortgages.Momentum's advertisements say it has raised more than $53 million from more than 2000 investors.Citing a downturn in the market, problem loans and a run on funds, the directors called in the administrators and a secured lender, Perpetual Nominees, had a receiver/manager appointed.McGrathNicol froze investors' accounts on Monday and said the fate of at least $36 million remained "uncertain".Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union organiser Russell Cunningham said the smaller operators and individuals tended to be hardest hit when development projects ran into trouble.Bellevue project manager Gerard Connoughton said work stopped in May and began again in August after Momentum paid debts estimated at $700,000.Workers on the eight-storey site were now owed $540,000 for the past six weeks' work.The shut-down caps a bad few weeks for one of the driving forces behind the Task Group, businessman Scott McKenzie, who was shot at outside his Carrington home on September 30.Mr McKenzie said yesterday he was grazed on the right thigh by a bullet from a hooded gunman who he believed had been trying to steal his car.He said the company behind the Bellevue job, Task Developments 2, was trading but he and his fellow directors were "winding back" the Task Group's operations.Another company, Task Developments, which built the $25 million Dockside apartments at Carrington, went into voluntary administration on October 9 with SV Partners.SV Partners spokesman Daniel Quinn said the company had three unsold units as assets.
© 2008 Newcastle Herald
