The property owners of an unfinished Ogden apartment complex, whose demolition started just after Christmas, are suing Salt Lake City-based contractor Makers Line — accusing the company of dooming the project by cutting corners.
The lawsuit filed Tuesday in 2nd District Court in Weber County is the 19th lawsuit filed against Makers Line and its related companies in the last year. It also is the largest, with the plaintiffs seeking damages of at least $9.7 million in the case’s largest claims.
The owners of the Union Walk site on Ogden’s 25th Street also accuse the now-shuttered contractor of taking similar shortcuts — particularly using untreated lumber that didn’t meet fire code — on a second Ogden project, Hunter’s Landing.
In the lawsuit, the owners also allege that Makers Line had cut similar corners in other projects, “and thus expected that it would be able to find a way to make the erroneous lumber work or otherwise get approved.”
The complaint alleges Makers Line and its executives — including husband-and-wife duo Jason and Ellen Winkler and Timothy Foster, the company’s former president — knew there were structural deficiencies in both the Union Walk and the Hunter’s Landing projects and carried on anyway, while claiming publicly that everything was going according to plan.
The plaintiffs — property owner Union Station LLC and developer Summa Terra Ventures LLC (which, according to the lawsuit, created Union Station “for the purpose of real estate development” at Union Walk) — have leveled 22 claims against Makers Line and associates, seeking damages that range from $150,000 to $9.7 million per claim.
Demolition commenced on the uncompleted five-story Union Walk building last week. Ogden spokesperson Mike McBride told The Salt Lake Tribune hat the city hoped the building would be rebuilt. Meanwhile, the Hunter’s Landing site, on Ogden’s 12th Street, remains in semi-constructed limbo, according to court documents, but will likely require “almost complete repair or replacement.”
Attorneys for Makers Line did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
Union Walk, from dream to demolition
The lawsuit lays out a timeline of Union Walk’s journey, from idea to rubble.
In February 2021, Union Station LLC bought the parcel on Ogden’s 25th Street, according to court documents. The vision was for a five-story luxury apartment complex, one story higher than most buildings in the area, with commercial space on the ground floor.
Union Station hired AE Urbia, an architecture firm based in South Jordan, as the project’s lead architect and engineer. Executives for AE Urbia, which is also listed as a defendant in the lawsuit, said they could not directly respond to the lawsuit’s allegations, but said the company “maintains that the drawings and specifications provided for the project were approved by the local governing authority and confirm to any and all industry standards.”
With drawings in hand, Union Station hired Makers Line as the general contractor in October 2021, according to the lawsuit.
The city of Ogden gave the green light to Union Walk’s construction plans in December 2021, according to city records. Construction began shortly after — and, the lawsuit alleges, so did problems.
According to the complaint, Makers Line “was aware of defective or erroneous work” early in the building process, but did not communicate the issues to Union Station. The most “egregious,” the lawsuit claims, was an issue of lumber: Makers Line framed the entire building with untreated lumber, in violation of fire code and the project’s approved plans. The lawsuit claims Makers Line, under the Winkers’ and Foster’s orders, “proceeded with the erroneous lumber in a forlorn attempt to save itself time and money on the project.”
The complaint alleges that “not a single framing element or member of the exterior walls complied with the building code.”
Instead, Makers Line allegedly sprayed fire retardant onto the untreated lumber after it was put up, which was “insufficient to cure the code violations,” the lawsuit claims.
Union Station became suspicious of Makers Line’s work in November 2022, the lawsuit claims, and hired a separate engineer, Epic Engineering, to inspect the project. Epic Engineering found “numerous structural deficiencies, errors and omissions in the work Makers Line had performed,” the lawsuit claims.
Four months later, in March 2023, the city of Ogden’s building inspectors first discovered the building had been framed with untreated lumber and issued a stop order, according to court documents and city records. Another inspection in September found 17 more structural issues that “constitute[d] an immediate danger to the life, limb, health, property or safety of the public,” and the city again ordered a halt to the work on the building, according to the stop order.
Makers Line was facing numerous legal and financial battles by then. The company ceased operations in November, but rumors of its demise started circulating in October.
Union Station officially fired Makers Line in November. By December, the developer had two options: Fix the laundry list of issues the city identified, or demolish and start over. It chose the latter.
More problems at other sites?
The Hunter’s Landing project has an almost identical trajectory, the lawsuit alleges: Work started in early 2022; Makers Line used untreated lumber and lied about it; and there were issues with the design plans.
Ogden ordered work to stop on the Hunter’s Landing project last March. Proposed solutions were approved and a new permit was issued in December, but funds have run dry, the lawsuit claims, and construction liens on the property have “encumbered the title to the ... property” and “resulted in additional monetary losses.”
The complaint against Makers Line alleges the contractor intentionally and knowingly moved forward with faulty construction and untreated lumber, in violation of city code, hoping no one would notice.
“The representatives and agents of Makers Line ... knew the statements were false, or else they made false statements recklessly without regard for the truthfulness of the statements,” the complaint alleges.
In the lawsuit, Union Station and Summa Terra Ventures make the accusation that Makers Line “had done the same thing on other project [sic] in other jurisdictions.” The plaintiffs do not give any evidence in the complaint to back up that accusation.
Among the previous lawsuits filed against Makers Line and its related entities, most are from subcontractors seeking payment for labor performed on various projects. Those suits seek damages that, put together, would cost the contractor slightly less than $3 million.
One case that is different is between the Winklers’ Industry Office LLC and Recursion Pharmaceuticals. Industry Office accused the drug maker last June of trying to back out of a lease on a manufacturing facility the Winklers’ company would own. Recursion countered that Industry Office fell short of its duties as a contractor — and accused Jason Winkler of misrepresenting progress on the construction. That litigation is still pending.
Shannon Sollitt is a Report for America corps member covering business accountability and sustainability for The Salt Lake Tribune. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by clicking here.
