The companies, part of the joint venture (JV) in charge of constructing Worcester’s Polar Park baseball stadium in Massachusetts, have agreed to pay $1.9 million in response to allegations made by the Attorney General’s office that the JV misrepresented claims to include women and minority-owned businesses as subcontractors.
The assurance of discontinuance, filed in Suffolk Superior Court, alleges the JV violated the state’s False Claims Act and consumer protection laws by falsely stating participation plans in its bid for the Polar Park project. The JV bid for the role of construction manager at-risk on the Polar Park project in early 2019. It stated to maximize participation of women and minority-owned businesses and then, once selected to manage the project, misrepresented the status of their participation to the Worcester Redevelopment Authority (WRA) until the project was substantially complete.
As part of the bid, it committed to using “best efforts” to achieve the project’s 20 percent combined participation goal and further stated it would implement a “robust action plan” to ensure these goals were met. Based on the representations in the bid, the WRA awarded the contract. However, once the project was underway, the JV did little to encourage participation on the project and did not track where the project’s spending stood with respect to the 20 percent goal.
Additionally, the contract required the JV to provide monthly updates to the WRA on the status of the...
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