Fort Worth is suing over broken streets
The city is suing a subdivision developer and a paving contractor, saying they're responsible for broken streets that have cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars. The suit accuses Arcadia Park Limited Partners and Site Concrete of shoddy street construction in the Arcadia Park subdivision in far north Fort Worth. Less than two years after the streets were finished, two blocks of Rainy Lake Drive "were discovered to have been so badly constructed that they must be completely rebuilt," the suit says. Today, Rainy Lake Drive is webbed with cracks and pocked with breaks, dips and patches of asphalt. City officials say it will have to be rebuilt.

Fort Worth is suing over broken streets

By MIKE LEE
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

                

STAR-TELEGRAM/RON JENKINS

Chisos Rim Trail is one of the streets in the Arcadia Park subdivision showing wear long before it should be. Fort Worth is suing the developer and a paving contractor, accusing them of shoddy street construction in the development.

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FORT WORTH -- The city is suing a subdivision developer and a paving contractor, saying they're responsible for broken streets that have cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars.

The suit accuses Arcadia Park Limited Partners and Site Concrete of shoddy street construction in the Arcadia Park subdivision in far north Fort Worth. Less than two years after the streets were finished, two blocks of Rainy Lake Drive "were discovered to have been so badly constructed that they must be completely rebuilt," the suit says.

Today, Rainy Lake Drive is webbed with cracks and pocked with breaks, dips and patches of asphalt. City officials say it will have to be rebuilt.

Arcadia, based in Plano, subdivided the land and paid for the streets. The company's phone number is unlisted, and company officials could not be reached for comment.

Site Concrete installed the utility lines and the streets. Site's president, Mike Boney of Flower Mound, did not respond to calls seeking an interview. The company's attorney, Thomas Fee, declined to comment, saying the company has not been served with the suit.

The city's lawsuit doesn't ask for a specific amount of damages, but city officials have said it costs $660,000 to rebuild one mile of one-lane concrete street.

And in the boomtown atmosphere of Fort Worth's outlying suburbs, the lane-miles are adding up quickly. City officials believe $21 million worth of developer-built streets have failed, leaving taxpayers on the hook. The Arcadia Park lawsuit is the first time the city has tried to recover damages for a new subdivision's streets, but officials said there could be more.

City officials have said that the city bore some of the responsibility. Until recently, the city had only minimal construction standards for new streets and lacked inspectors to keep track of the building boom. The city has since beefed up its standards, requiring streets to be designed to meet local conditions and requiring soil tests by an independent laboratory, instead of relying on a lab chosen by the paving company.

Most of the problems are related to "trench failure," which can happen when developers rapidly clear land, Deputy City Attorney Gerald Pruitt said. If the soil used to fill in ditches and creek beds isn't compacted correctly, it will expand and contract at a different rate than the surrounding soil, which can cause roads to crack.

"That would have nothing to do with engineering standards," Pruitt said.

Rainy Lake Drive has about 45 houses valued between $100,000 and $130,000, according to Tarrant Appraisal District records. City officials said another street in the subdivision, Chisos Rim Trail, has also broken well before it should have.

It won't be Site's first time in court. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration has fined the company more than $200,000 since 2003. In all three cases, inspectors found workers at the bottom of deep trenches without adequate safety precautions, OSHA concluded.

In one case, a worker laying a sewer pipe was killed after being crushed by a rock slide.

In 2002, Site was among several contractors and developers sued by neighbors of the Villages at Woodland Springs, who contended that the subdivision was poorly designed and built, causing their homes to flood. Site was dropped from the suit, which focused largely on the subdivision's layout.

In 2003, allegations that Site's work was substandard were raised in a lawsuit filed by Site against another developer.